I caught a glimpse of Eleanor in the jeep’s rearview mirror. She and Ember were deep in conversation while Christiana drove, looking in her own jeep’s rearview mirror every few seconds and nodding along. All three of them were smiling, and I took a moment to marvel at Ember’s natural ability to ingratiate herself with people.
Eleanor looked as I remembered her from long-ago summer days in Saint Catherine: sunny, amiable, and happy. Ember said something and Eleanor threw her head back and laughed, falling against her seat.
I turned to Dean. “Where’d you find Eleanor? I hope she wasn’t taken by the Westerners.”
“Now there’s a story,” Graham said, leaning forward with his elbows on the sides of the front seats.
“Eleanor is our financier,” Dean said, looking at the rearview mirror and smiling with affection. “You might find it hard to believe, but until a few years ago, the Sentinels were a fly-by-night operation with few guns, fewer bullets, and no hope of ever truly hurting the Westerners.”
Dean’s expression turned distant, as if he were recalling a fond memory. “We were in Las Vegas, and I was following a lead on the strip. Halfway through, I figured out that I was the one being followed, so I hid in a casino. That’s when I saw Eleanor for the first time. Her hair was up, and she was wearing this glittery red dress cut down to—well, er, anyway, she was killing it at the roulette table.”
I could picture the scene. “She must be lethal at casinos.” I was able to appreciate what a woman of her intelligence and power could do at games that combined skill and chance. Benjamin had taught me how to play poker in October and explained that while he loved the game, he refused to play with Eleanor, who never lost, or Beau, who cheated.
“She is,” Dean agreed. “We made eye contact, and I kid you not, she collected her winnings and walked right up to me and said, ‘You’re my best chance of being free. I’m going with you.’”
I elbowed Dean. “Tell me you asked for her name at some point in the evening. Or were you too dazzled by her cleavage to ask for that minor detail?”
Dean cleared his throat. “After I’d recovered from the shock, we got to talking and she explained that she was a Super, who her family was, and that she wanted a new life. One thing led to another, and within a few months we’d earned enough money in the casinos to buy everything we own. We were even able to found a permanent settlement, which is where we’re going now. It’s filled with people who owe her their lives. Well, with one exception. Christiana was an interesting case. She actually found us.”
“How?”
“She calls herself a horse telepath, but her power is so beyond that, it’s ridiculous. She’s essentially the worldwide queen of horses. Whenever she’s around them, she becomes the alpha, for lack of a better word. She can speak to them, command them, lead them, anything at all. She says that when she was a kid in the camps, she’d hear horses from nearby farms, but nobody realized what was going on. After she was sold out here, where there are wild horses, she discovered the extent of her powers and used the horses to break out. We ran into her a few years after we escaped.”
“She’d live with the horses if she could,” Graham added from the backseat. “Sometimes I feel as though the Sentinels are a side gig for her.”
“But she can also block Ember’s telepathy?”
Dean sighed. “Yeah, that’s the downside to having Christiana around. From what I’ve noticed, people who are telepathic toward one animal can block other psychic talents. There’s a few people back at the main settlement who can cast illusions and the like. They hate it when Christiana is around.”
Ember had described Christiana’s influence as a “wet blanket.” Considering how powerful Ember herself was, Christiana must’ve been a force of untold potency.
“It’s a shame about Ember’s telepathy, though,” Graham said. “We could use it to find the remaining JM-104. We could have her listen in on leads. She could question people.”
I grimaced at Graham. “Find it? Why do you want to find it? I don’t want to get near it.”
“To destroy it,” Dean said. “It’s the ultimate reason any of this is happening. Take away the JM-104, and the whole trade collapses. Our intelligence is that there’s only twelve or so ounces left, but none of us have any idea where it might be. Bell is keeping that secret. It’s probably not even written down.”
“Do you think Ember would be willing to travel for the search?” Graham asked, rubbing his chin. “Man, she’d be useful. Dean, think of the possibilities.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Though I know where it is at Chattahoochee.”
Isabel had told me that she’d seen Elder St. James hide it in his hut. If there was any more besides the vial he’d used on Reuben, it would be there.
Graham whipped around. “Where? You have a lead?”
“It doesn’t matter, because nobody’s going there,” Dean said, annoyed. “We’ve talked about this. It’s too risky.”
Graham glared at the back of Dean’s head but dropped the subject.
The trucks rolled through the mountains all afternoon. When the sun was low and light snow had begun to fall, the convoy turned down an unpaved track similar to the one that lead to Chattahoochee camp.
We bounced and jolted for twenty minutes, then the road evened out. Modest, simple homes lined it, tucked in the tall conifers of the Rockies. Children in warm clothes waved at us as we drove by.
“Get ready to unload,” Dean said. “We’re here.”
The road widened and ended in a clearing, which was surrounded by plain, unmarked buildings. Women, children, and a few older men hurried out from houses and the plain buildings, calling to people in the convoy. The cattle car opened, and the twenty occupants jumped out and ran to meet their friends and family.
Gregory hurried to embrace an older couple. I was too shocked to be sad.
Dean put his hand on my shoulder. “This is the main settlement. We call it Liberty.”
I gazed around the area, trying to figure out what was missing from the little town.
“It’s so unprotected,” I said after a few seconds. “Aren’t you worried the Westerners will retaliate?”
“No. We don’t leave survivors, so nobody follows us. We chose this location because it’s nowhere near any of the Westerner settlements. The mountains and trees provide natural cover, and we’re so far from civilian towns that nobody will ever accidentally drive here.”
“Not even a wall?”
Dean gave my shoulder a playful punch. “Go tell the ex-slaves that you want to wall them in, and then come back and tell me their response.” He looked down at his watch. “I’ve got to go talk to some of the guys. Christiana will help your team get situated while I’m doing that, and then I’d love it if you came to the after-action review.”
His blue eyes shone with eagerness.
For a moment I saw Benjamin’s face in my mind, the same eagerness in his eyes as he sat across from me on a loveseat at Café Stella and asked me questions about my team. He’d always admired superheroes and longed to touch our world.
Except he had touched our world, many times over, when he’d engaged the Baltimore team in battle.
Ice filled my stomach as I realized that Benjamin hadn’t been questioning me about the team out of pure interest when we’d talked in the café last year. He’d been conducting reconnaissance on possible enemies, learning who the team leader was, what our powers were, and our combat statistics.
“I’ll be there,” I said, searching for a private spot in the trees.
Dean smiled at me before waving down Ken and walking away.
I dashed behind the tree line and took gulping breaths to stop the pain that gripped my heart, but to no avail.
After a few minutes, I found Christiana and asked her to show my team and me our new quarters.
Our house was snug and warm, with two bedrooms, a living area, and a kitchen that had a small supply of shelf-stable food. Two couches faced the sm
all fireplace in the living room, and a coat rack stood next to the door. Our bedrooms contained narrow beds with brightly-patterned homemade quilts on them, donated by the residents of Liberty.
Though the house contained little in the way of decoration, the scratched kitchen table bore a vase of fresh flowers, blooms of vibrant yellow and white that filled the room with pungent fragrance. Where had those come from?
Ember and I shared one room, while the men were crammed in the other. If anyone disliked the arrangements, they hadn’t said anything, though I had to admit that my team hadn’t said much of anything to me since leaving Wyoming.
Reid and Ember, though civil, gave me furtive glances now and then, while Marco was openly hostile.
Benjamin was ignoring me completely. As soon as we’d been assigned our cabin, he’d disappeared into the infirmary, a white building with a red cross painted over the door.
But that was fine. There were other people who wanted to talk to me.
23
Snow swirled around me as I plodded from my team’s small house, one of many reserved for newcomers to Liberty, to the large building at the far end of the clearing.
Liberty… the place where liberated people lived. While I walked toward the main building I had to admit that it wasn’t so much a town as a haphazard collection of structures.
There were perhaps three dozen total buildings lining the main road, which was also the only road. Most of them were houses, with warm yellow glows lighting their front windows as the inhabitants ate dinner and prepared for bed.
Others, all unmarked, contained hints of their true purposes: one smelled strongly of gun oil and metal, and next to the door stood a clearing barrel—an armory.
Another building had a well-used playground in the back, indicating a school.
A third was the infirmary, where Benjamin had gone.
The fourth, a long and low building next to my destination, hummed from within. There was some kind of electrical equipment running, though I couldn’t say what. As I passed, I thought I smelled flowers and other types of vegetation, suggesting a greenhouse or nursery.
The smell of the possible greenhouse attuned my attention to the other odd bits of plant life in Liberty. Though it was midwinter, the surrounding flora was surprisingly lush. The evergreens exploded with life, their emerald needles plump and shining amid the snow that coated their branches.
Each house had a small flower garden in front of it, and underneath the snow I could see hints of purple and pink.
I paused at one garden and brushed snow off a tulip, which had only begun to wilt. Wasn’t it four or five months too early for tulips? What kind of fertilizer were they using here?
I reached the main building and opened the door. The gush of warm air was a welcome feeling. The large room inside reminded me of the social hall at the church next to my team’s headquarters in Saint Catherine. However, instead of scratched linoleum, this room was carpeted. Twenty Sentinels milled around and chatted quietly. Most of them were young men, some of whom couldn’t have been older than seventeen or eighteen.
In the corner Eleanor conversed in hushed tones with Christiana. Eleanor glanced up at me when I entered and gave me a look of deepest loathing.
I didn’t care. I didn’t really know Eleanor, anyway.
Gregory stood in the corner, leaning against the wall and watching everyone with an unreadable expression.
I walked up to him and he looked away, his face turning red. I reached out to touch his arm, but he flinched.
“We can talk later,” I said, turning to go find my own patch of wall to brood against.
“No, wait. I’m just… I’m just still dealing with what happened. It’s only been fourteen hours.”
Had it just been this morning? I felt like I’d known the Sentinels forever. “Please forgive yourself. Don’t beat yourself up.”
“You’re my sister. I have the best damned eyesight of the entire human race, yet I didn’t recognize you when you were running away. So yeah, I’m going to beat myself up.”
“It was a good shot, though.” I gave him a little smile even though I felt no happiness. “Right through the hand. One in a million shot, right there.”
“Oh, please, not if you’re me. That was easy.” He turned his eyes toward me, and for a fraction of a second I saw a killer who’d taken the time to call me garbage before he’d intended to execute me.
I stared at my brother, the man I’d once considered my best friend. He and I had been inseparable. When I’d climbed over the rail of the bridge, I’d chosen to picture him in my final moments.
But now that the impossible had happened, and he was alive and well, I felt nothing. The name was the same, but the person was off. My Gregory giggled while playing tag. My Gregory hung upside down from trees and blew raspberries at the trainees while they tried to ignore him. My Gregory cried when his pet tent moth died.
This Gregory? This Gregory wore camouflage pants and combat boots. This Gregory shot to wound and torment. This Gregory’s eyes were laden with sorrow, and the hatred that was born from it.
“What happened to you, Gregory?” I was afraid to reach out to him.
His flinty eyes narrowed. “Didn’t Dean fill you in? Elder sold me to the Westerners to be their slave. I’ll let you imagine the dirty details, but I’ll give you a hint: think of the most horrible thing you can, then triple it. That was my life for a year.”
“Then the Sentinels rescued you?”
His face softened. “Yeah. Then the Sentinels rescued me. They taught me what it means to be a real hero.” His eyes tightened again. “You have no idea what that word means, do you?”
A small flame burst to life in my chest.
“I know what it means,” I said, my voice dangerously soft. “Don’t you dare imply that my teammates are anything other than heroes.”
He rolled his eyes. “Your team grew up in the cult. What the hell would they know about heroism?”
I took a step toward him. “Those four are some of the bravest, best superheroes who have ever served the American people, and I will not let anyone, even you, say otherwise to me.”
I didn’t know what I’d do to him if he kept talking, but my fingers ached to hit something. He was the nearest target. Simple enough.
Gregory blinked rapidly. “All right, fine. Sorry. God, relax.” After one last disgusted look, he walked away, heading toward another group of young men.
I leaned against the wall where he’d been leaning and watched everyone, silent and seething.
A few minutes later, Dean and Graham pushed through the doors. The quiet hum of voices dwindled to nothing and everyone made their way to the middle of the room, forming a half circle around Dean.
He held up a piece of paper. “Before everything, I want you all to know that Andrew’s team just raided a compound in North Dakota. Sixteen bodies and intelligence about the compounds!”
The group cheered.
I clapped, unable to summon enthusiasm.
Dean waited for everyone to settle down, then continued, “That’s the good news. The bad news is that we’re going to move out in forty-eight hours to raid a sorting station in Wyoming again. However, unlike last time, we’re going to have some new faces. Sentinels, meet Battlecry, or as she lets me call her, Jillian. I think we’ve all heard about her.” He pulled me by the elbow into the middle of the circle.
Laughter ran through the group. Some of them nodded and smiled encouragingly, but most just scowled.
Dean beamed. “The famous heroes of Saint Catherine, Georgia joined our team today.”
I did a double take. “I never agreed to that. I need to talk about it with my team.”
After the momentary surprise, anger flickered again. Who the hell did Dean think he was, telling me that I was on his team?
“Come on! Fight with us!”
“You’re a Sentinel now!”
“The Johnson siblings! Woo!”
“Screw the p
rinciples!”
Sentinels yelled at me, some of them explicitly urging me to abandon my vows and declare myself one of them. Their excitement extinguished some of my anger, but I did not share it.
I bit my lip. “All right, all right.” I gestured for them to calm down. “I want this to be very clear,” I said, raising my voice. “I am my team’s leader, but right now I speak only for myself. My team and I aren’t affiliated with the camps anymore—” I waited for the booing to stop, then continued, “—so our status as superheroes is in question. It’s very possible that we’ll be hunted for abandoning the camps.”
“Then we’ll kill ‘em!” someone yelled from the back.
The room erupted into cheering that was simultaneously jubilant and terrifying.
When they’d stopped, I said, “Until we figure out what we’re going to do next, I will aid you as a Sentinel. However, I will not pledge my team’s allegiance. They have to make that decision for themselves. I don’t want to hear that anyone is pressuring them or expecting something from them. Can everyone agree to that?”
The Sentinels nodded and murmured among themselves.
I turned to Dean. “Happy?”
Dean inclined his head. “Very.”
I gave him a cold smile. “Oh, by the way, I’m your new second-in-command.”
The resultant oohing of the Sentinels seemed to carry a challenge to Dean.
Dean laughed. “What? No, you’re not. Ken, Andrew, and Graham are my executive officers.”
“Buddy, I did not risk my life to take over my team, torture and fight my way out of the camps, and then come all the way across the country to stand here and have some pretty boy tell me that I’m going to join his team, and then not get to call some of the shots. If you’ve got a problem with that, I’ll show you what I did to the last leader of mine who overstepped his boundaries.”
Dean’s crooked grin made my stomach flutter. “I think I can find a place for you in the chain. Tomorrow morning, report back here and we’ll go over the preliminary plans for the next raid.”
Sentinel Page 20
