Night Sky

by Suzanne Brockmann

  “Just one thing before you go,” Cal said.

  Dana raised an eyebrow. “What’s that, Scoot?”

  “Can you, er, switch seats with me?” Cal wanted his wheelchair back, but he wouldn’t be able to get into it without Dana’s help.

  Dana looked at him for a moment, her eyes squinting with suspicion. “You promise you won’t pull some stunt and leave the car before I give the all clear?”

  “I thought we were giving the all clear, since we’re keeping count of the assholes,” Cal countered.

  Dana stared at him for a few more moments. “Fine,” she said, making sure the inside light was switched off before opening the door and getting out of the car. And then, with not a lot of grace, she used her telekinetic powers to transfer Cal back into his chair—and into the driver’s seat.

  “Thank you.” He smiled sweetly up at her.

  “Whatever,” Dana grumbled. She stood outside the car, waiting for Milo to get his butt in gear.

  Milo looked at me.

  “Please be careful,” I whispered.

  He smiled. “I will. And please keep the car locked while you and Calvin are out here. Okay?”

  “Okay.” I nodded. We’d parked off the road behind a thicket of brush. Even if someone drove up the hill instead of down into town, they wouldn’t see us. Unless, of course, they were looking.

  But why would they be looking?

  Milo took another moment to gaze at me before wrapping his arms around me. See you soon.

  I’ll see you soon.

  Calvin and I watched them disappear down the dark hillside.

  “Come sit up here,” he finally said.

  I climbed up and over, into the front passenger seat, and sighed.

  “I hope this works,” Cal whispered.

  “I hope so too.”

  We waited in silence.

  “Look!” Cal exclaimed after a few moments. “Do you see that?”

  Sure enough, several bright lights had clicked on, illuminating both the barn and a section of the metal building next to it. Then a group of men, dressed in everything from a white lab coat and medical scrubs, to jeans and a do-rag, to really dorky-looking plaid pajamas, headed purposefully around the side of the barn, toward the parking lot. Two men joined them, coming out of the barn.

  “They’re leaving!” I whispered excitedly. “Dana’s mind-control is working!”

  “This is effin’ awesome!” Cal said as one of the men opened the door to the Doggy Doo Good truck and put something inside. The keys? I hoped so. “She’s effin’ awesome!”

  “She is,” I agreed. Without Dana, we wouldn’t have had a fighting chance to pull this off.

  One by one, the cars all pulled away, some of the men carpooling and leaving together. The headlights traveled up the driveway and then turned into taillights as the cars took a right, away from us, down the hill.

  “Wait a minute, whose car is that?” Calvin asked. He pointed to the dark shape of a very large vehicle still parked a few slots down from the Doggy Doo Good truck.

  Eight men had come out on the drive. Had one of them left his car behind?

  But no, then I saw him—one last, lone man, standing outside the barn, almost absentmindedly swinging something—a stick or a rake or a cane—next to his leg.

  He was an oak tree of a man dressed in a red button-down shirt and grimy, stained blue jeans. He stood staring after the last of those taillights, looking confused and annoyed, just swinging that stick, just swinging it, swinging…

  “Oh my God,” I whispered.

  “What?” Cal asked. “What’s wrong?”

  Baseball bat. It wasn’t a rake or a cane or a stick; it was a baseball bat.

  It was the man from my visions.

  And he wasn’t walking toward his car.

  Something had gone wrong. Dana’s mind-control didn’t seem to work on him.

  “Uh-oh.” Calvin was thinking what I was. “I wonder if he’s taking some kind of painkiller.”

  “Like Garrett,” I said.

  “Now what?” Calvin asked, even as he started his car.

  I shook my head. I didn’t know. Where was Dana? But I spotted her, a tiny punctuation of a person compared to the monstrous guard with his lethal weapon.

  She was flitting through the trees that lined the field next to the barn, careful to stay out of the beam of light that shone onto the gravel path. I held my breath, praying that the giant man wouldn’t spot her, praying that she’d made note of the bat in his hands, even though he was now holding it tucked in close to his body, slightly behind his back.

  Dana hid behind a clump of trees, and as we watched, the big guard seemed to know exactly where she was. He moved toward her slowly, carefully.

  “He knows exactly where she is,” Calvin breathed. “But she doesn’t know he’s coming.”

  “She’s Dana,” I told him, but I wasn’t sure if I quite believed it myself. “She knows he’s coming.”

  The guard moved closer. And closer.

  “She doesn’t know,” Calvin said. “Oh, shit, she doesn’t know!”

  And he turned on the engine, put his car in gear, and hit the gas. We drove right down the hillside, through the field, bumping and bouncing our way directly toward the barn.

  The big guard looked away from Dana and over at us, so that worked.

  But Dana looked away from him as well, clearly freaked out and distracted by the sight of us barreling down the hill toward her.

  Calvin’s car bounced onto the driveway, skidding slightly on the gravel before coming to a stop.

  And Dana took off running, making a beeline toward us, as she tried to put herself between us and the guard. Her sparkly dress twinkled as she sprinted, comet-like, toward the car.

  She was fast, but the big guard was, surprisingly, faster.

  “Dana, look out!” Calvin opened the driver’s side door of the car and started to release the wheelchair ramp.

  As if he hadn’t distracted Dana enough.

  “Get back into that car!” she shouted, and I grabbed at his arm, trying to hold him back.

  And then it happened. She turned toward the big man, and she used her telekinetic power to spin him around, but she hadn’t seen the bat he was carrying, and it extended his reach just far enough to clip her, hard, in the side of the head, with a horrible crack, which sent her down to the ground.

  And she didn’t get back up.

  The guard with the bat had been flung by Dana’s power, nearly over to the barn door, and he did get up, refreshing his grip on that bat handle.

  And Dana didn’t get back up.

  I’d already let go of Calvin, and he’d gotten out of the car in a record-breaking amount of time. I followed him as he revved the engine to his wheelchair, dirt flying through the air as he whirled toward Dana, who was lying crumpled in the gravel.

  Baseball Bat Man was moving toward her, weapon in hand, and I knew that I couldn’t let him get anywhere near either Calvin or Dana.

  And God, Dana was still lying there, so still.

  I tried to move her. She’d had a theory that my telekinetic powers worked best in life-or-death situations, but I couldn’t do it. She didn’t move. And she didn’t move. I gritted my teeth and she still didn’t move.

  So I finally did. I sprinted—full-force sprinted—away from both Dana and the nasty guard.

  “Hey! Over here!” I belted out.

  The guard looked up at me. He held the bat next to his ear, as if getting ready to hit a home run. I spotted a trickle of blood on the wooden surface. More dots of splattered blood…Dana’s splattered blood…decorated his face.

  “Come and get me, douche bag!” I shouted.

  The guard charged.

  And I ran.

  And, yes, he was fast. But I k
new I was faster.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Calvin scoop Dana up off the ground and onto his lap. Her body was limp, like a rag doll.

  “Milo, where are you?” I shouted, even as I continued to sprint around the corner of the barn into the thick of an unkempt field of wild grass that lay between the two buildings. “Dana needs your help!”

  In truth, Dana was probably dead.

  “I’m gonna git ya!” the man growled. Even from so far away, I could still smell the overpowering sewage stench of his pure evil. It invaded my nostrils and clogged my throat, sending my head spinning and my stomach churning.

  I could outrun this guy—but I couldn’t do it if I was busy puking my guts out.

  Still thoughts, still thoughts—it didn’t work quite as well without Milo there to anchor me, but it helped enough to keep me up and moving.

  Looking around wildly, I wished for one panicky moment that the field could provide me with at least one portapotty to explode onto my pursuer.

  But no such luck.

  All I had to work with was a stone wall that ran back behind the lab.

  It wasn’t much, but it was something.

  But before I had the chance to focus my attention on the potential weaponry of dozens of boulders being flung through the air, I heard an echoing click behind me.

  “Freeze, girl, or I blow your brains out!”

  I stopped in my tracks. Hands raised in the air, I turned around slowly, my stomach filling with dread as I realized that the guard didn’t just own a bat.

  He also had a gun.

  And it was pointed at my face.

  The guard kept his mouth closed as he chuckled quietly, a low, thunderous sound that sent my skin crawling.

  “I don’t know who you are, or where you came from,” the big guard said, “but judging from the things you can do, I’m guessing we could use some girls like you and your friend. The gimp’s gotta go, though. Or maybe we’ll just use him to make you cooperate.”

  I spat at him as I channeled Dana and told him to do the anatomically impossible.

  “Or I could just bleed you dry now,” he said, raising his weapon even higher. “That’s probably the smartest thing to do. Keeping girls like you alive can cause trouble, and I don’t want to get into trouble.”

  I was going to die.

  I was going to…

  “But let’s do this inside,” the guard said, gesturing with his weapon toward the barn, “so I can bleed you out proper.”

  I couldn’t go in there with him. I knew, with a bone-chilling certainty, that if I went inside that barn with this horrible man, I would never come out again.

  “Move!” he shouted at me. “I will shoot you. I will shoot you!

  It was then, without warning, that Milo stepped out from around the back corner of the barn, shouting, “Hey!”

  He’d startled the big man, who fired his gun.

  “Milo!” I shouted. I launched myself toward him as he did the same to me, and we hit the ground, arms and legs flailing as we each checked to make sure the other hadn’t been shot.

  Are you hit? he asked me.

  I’m not hit. Are you hit?

  I’m not hit. Oh my God, Sky. Are you sure?

  I’m sure. Am I sure? Wait. I am. Are you?

  I’m sure!

  Oh, thank God! I clung to Milo, and he held me tightly too.

  “Get up!” the guard’s voice bellowed. “MOVE!”

  Milo and I both scrambled to our feet as I asked him, Is Dana all right?

  I don’t know. I was hoping this guy would try to bring you through the back door. I was going to jump him, but then I was afraid he was just going to shoot you. I didn’t know what else to do.

  Our fingers interlaced, we clung to each other. Milo’s vanilla scent calmed me down just the tiniest bit, helping me deal with the smell of the sewage. I leaned close to him and breathed deeply.

  “Inside! Let’s go!” The guard wanted us to walk in front of him around the side of the barn, toward the front door.

  Back where we’d left Dana and Calvin. I looked at Milo and he looked at me. Neither of us moved.

  If we go in the barn now, we die, I told him.

  Milo squeezed my hand. I’m gonna go for that gun. It’s the only way.

  No, it’s not. I’m gonna try to explode that stone wall, I continued silently. Don’t look, but it’s on our left-hand side.

  Okay. I know what you’re talking about.

  You’ve gotta get ready to duck. I don’t know how accurate I can be. My mind was whirling as I was trying to figure out what I’d done wrong. How had I moved Garrett, but not Dana?

  Milo nodded almost imperceptibly.

  Thoughts of everything I’d moved with my sporadic telekinesis skills raced through my head. The clogged toilet. The water bursting out of the fire hydrant. The sprinklers in the park.

  I concentrated. And I concentrated, letting my heart pound and my pulse race as I tried to channel everything I was feeling.

  And…

  Nothing. Happened.

  Why not why not why not? I was terrified, not angry—maybe that was the problem.

  “Move or I will shoot your boyfriend!” the guard shouted at me.

  Over my dead body! I tried to bolster my courage, but it was drowned out by ohmygodohmygod.

  I’m gonna go for him, Milo sent to me over my inner noise.

  “Don’t you dare,” I shouted at them both, adding, “Oh my God, I’m gonna throw up!” I doubled over, and then even dropped down to my hands and knees, hoping to buy some time. “Just give me a few seconds. Please, sir. I don’t want to have to clean it up once we’re inside.”

  That did it. The guard didn’t want to clean up after me either, so he waited as Milo reached down to touch my shoulder as if comforting me, but instead to tell me, I’m going for his gun.

  The boy had a one-track mind.

  You have to make a run for it, I told Milo. He’s a lousy shot. If we go in two different directions, he won’t know what to do.

  I am not. Leaving. You.

  And that pissed me off. I glared at Milo, even as I leaned over, pretending to dry-heave. You have to.

  No.

  Yes!

  No, Sky. Unlike some people, Milo didn’t get louder when he was upset. He got quieter and more intense.

  Please, I started, but before I could continue my protest, the lab exploded in a burst of orange and white, sending shards of metal and wood and billowing balls of flame and smoke up into the sky.

  I felt Milo’s surprise. Did you…?

  But it wasn’t me.

  The guard stumbled, pushed down to the ground by the force of the blast, and I dodged a piece of flying wood as Milo let go of me and charged him, knocking the gun out of the man’s hand.

  They rolled together across the ground as I scrambled back to my feet.

  Where was his gun? I hadn’t seen which way it went. I tried to figure out the physics of where it might have gone, scrambling and feeling around in the high grass.

  Flames licked the sky as the fire enveloped the now two-dimensional building. We were all close enough to feel the heat on our faces.

  My heart was pounding, and I was nearly shaking with fear and anger. I tried to focus on the anger—where was that fucking gun?—and aim it again at the stone wall—when I realized that my telekinesis, at least the large-scale TK that was useful in a fight like this, was focused on moving water.

  When I’d saved Garrett, I hadn’t thought; I’d just done it. The human body was sixty percent water, and my innate skills had simply done the required task.

  When I’d just tried to move Dana, I’d tried to move Dana. I’d also been laden not just with fear, but with doubt.

  Right now, the nighttime ground was
wet with dew, the grass slick beneath my feet, and I pictured the water coating the rocks in that field-stone wall, seeping into the granite. I could do this. I could do this. And with a roar, that stone wall exploded straight up into the air.

  Holy crap, I was back, but I needed to do something that wouldn’t kill Milo too. I tried to focus on hitting the guard, on pushing that sorry sack of H2O away from my boyfriend.

  I inhaled a big, smoke-filled breath of air, bearing down as my body filled with heat—both from the fire around me and the rage bubbling from within.

  Unfortunately, the guard’s grip was so strong that he pulled Milo with him, and they slid together, back through the tall grass.

  “Milo!” I shouted. “Get away from him!”

  But, despite Milo’s strength, he was no match for the giant guard, and he couldn’t get away, and he couldn’t get away, and he couldn’t get away…

  And I was hanging on to my power, holding it back, trying to control it while I waited for the moment—just a heartbeat, a split second—when Milo scrambled free, so I could blast this son of a bitch straight to hell.

  And then it happened. The guard hit Milo, the force of the blow pushed him back, and it was now or never.

  I exhaled and let it rip, angry at my own fear, but certain it would work…

  Whoosh!

  With a rush of inexplicable energy, I released my power, sending the guard all the way across the field to the very edge of the burning building.

  Dazed, Milo sat up. He was battered and bleeding—I could see an open cut above his eyebrow.

  Meanwhile, the guard quickly scrambled to his feet, ready to go another round, even after I’d unleashed my fury.

  For a panicky moment, the thought crossed my mind that this man might have powers too.

  He was ridiculously strong.

  But there was no way he shared my abilities. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have had to use weapons like bats or guns—like the pistol he was pulling out of his waistband right at that moment. It was smaller than the first one, but that didn’t mean it was any less deadly.