He walked softly down the hall and peeked inside his mother’s bedroom, found what he’d expected, which was her sprawled out across the mattress asleep with the television on too loud and an ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts on the nightstand.
He went inside and switched the television off. “I’m headed to work, Mom. I’ll bring home some dinner, but try and eat lunch. There’s deli meat in the fridge.” His mother made no indication that she’d heard him. Which he’d also expected, and was why earlier he’d written out this exact phrase on a scrap of paper and taped it to the front of the fridge.
Quinten stepped out and closed his mother’s bedroom door and made his way to the front of the townhouse. He stepped out onto the front stoop, closing the door softly and locking it behind him. He looked at the sky, which was gray and boring. Breathed in the air, which was icy cold and smelled faintly of pine. Closed his eyes. Breathed in again. Shivered.
He opened his eyes. He’d felt something. Nothing tangible, but a trace of something different lurking in the air, a little ways off now, but heading his way. It could be anything, he told himself. It could be nothing at all. But instinct and experience worked hard to dispel this rationalization. He shrugged to himself. He’d known it was coming, had for some time now, the last year or so at least. But the realization of today possibly being the day sat heavy on his heart. He knew he might not make it. In fact, it almost seemed certain that he would not. The stars had their plans, and his role might have come to its end. His purpose fulfilled. He wouldn’t question it. It would do no good to do so. He’d learned this much, if nothing else, over these last seventeen years of being a soldier for the light.
Quinten took the three concrete steps down to the sidewalk and stopped, looked to his right, to where the street would end and then he could make another right and find himself walking out of town and into the county, only two miles from his aunt and uncle’s motel.
He went left instead. Headed into town to the coffee shop, where he would work in the morning before eating a quick lunch and then walking the three blocks to the Pizza Hut, where he waited tables and made decent tips and got to bring home a pie for dinner most nights if he wanted to. He stayed busy, kept himself busy on purpose. The busier he was, the less time he had to think about everything else.
He missed them, his aunt and uncle. It was simple as that. From an early age, they’d essentially raised him off and on as his mother had battled her addictions. She’d attempted to repay them—literally—the best she could after the accident. And while they’d accepted, starting the motel which had been somewhat of a dream for the two of them, Quinten knew that no amount of money would ever compensate them for all they’d done for him. They’d given him a life, a childhood his mother would have been absent for, and guidance as he’d become a young adult.
And they’d kept his secrets. All these years, they’d harbored the knowledge of what made him special and not spoken a word of it to anyone. They’d done all they could to protect him from being exposed and all the downfall that would potentially follow. They knew that he would never live a normal life, but they’d tried hard to give him one. They’d given him chores, given him a job, given him a home away from home. He’d loved them so much for that.
And then they’d gone too far.
Quinten walked down the sidewalk, kicking pebbles as he went, shaking his head for the millionth time as he considered it all again.
The thing that made him the saddest was that if today was the day, he might never see them again, and the last emotions he’d shared with them were anger and regret.
He hadn’t spoken to his aunt or uncle in months, not since the night during the summer when he’d learned the truth about the Backstroms, the nice young couple who he’d helped, the ones who’d been haunted, for lack of a better word, by the ghost of the man’s mother. Quinten had spoken with her in the way only he could, wordless conversations taking place in the ether while he’d held real conversations with real words with the Backstroms as they ate lunch together in the diner. She’d been stubborn, the ghost of the man’s mother. Rude, if Quinten was being completely honest. But in the end, he’d accomplished what he’d needed to, helping her to let go and say goodbye to her son, and then move on to where she belonged.
She’d loved the man very much, and while Quinten could feel it, he hoped the man had also been able to feel some trace of it, too. That he wouldn’t spend the rest of his life convinced his mother cared nothing for him.
The rest of his life…
How short that had ended up being.
Because later that night, in an ironic twist of fate, Quinten’s uncle had killed both the man and his wife. Shot them dead. The man first, as he’d lunged for Murry, attempting to thwart the attack, and then the woman, who’d frozen in shock at the sight of her husband’s dying body.
Quinten had seen all this, pulling the images from his uncle’s memories. Finding himself nearly freezing in shock as well, unable to believe what he was seeing. But the anger and disappointment and regret had quickly risen up, erasing the shock.
Everything had changed.
And they would never recover from it.
His uncle had not denied what Quinten had seen, knowing perfectly well what Quinten was capable of. Instead, he’d offered up a defense of trying to keep Quinten safe, saying that the Backstroms could mean trouble for him. That night after he’d walked home, Aunt Meriam had confirmed this on the phone while Quinten had stood in his and his mother’s kitchen with the telephone handset held loosely in his grip. She told Quinten what she’d overheard. She had even tried to take the blame, saying the entire stunt had been her idea from the start.
“Nobody was supposed to actually get hurt,” she’d said.
But whatever the reason, whatever was supposed to have happened, two innocent people had ended up dead. And Quinten knew exactly whose fault it all was.
His.
If he hadn’t confided in his aunt and uncle about the full extent of his abilities, the Backstroms would still be alive.
If he wasn’t who he was, lives would not have been lost.
That night during the summer in the motel’s parking lot had taught Quinten an important lesson. He needed to be alone for the rest of his life. No good would come from keeping anyone close to him. Anybody who knew his secrets instantly became a liability, both to themselves and to him.
He would never again make the same mistake he’d made with his aunt and uncle.
From now on, it was only him.
After the brief phone call with Meriam after he’d walked home that night, he found he couldn’t hold still, his mind too wound up. He left, wandering the city blocks, his mind drifting across clouds of time, recapping all the decisions he’d made, all the moments of his life that had somehow led him to right then, with the fresh knowledge that his uncle had committed murder, and unsure what exactly to do about it.
The answer had finally come to him sometime before the sun began to rise.
Murry and Meriam had kept Quinten’s secret all these years, so now it was his turn to keep theirs. But there was a personal stipulation to this solo agreement, a nonnegotiable clause that was meant to protect them all.
Quinten would never speak to them again.
They might not understand, but they didn’t need to.
Because by then, Quinten had already known that the end was coming.
He made it to the coffee shop and pushed through the door, greeted by the smell of freshly ground beans and warm pastries. Familiar sights and scents and sounds that pushed out all the negative thoughts in his mind and replaced them with the routines of his workday.
The shift went by quickly, a steady crowd of people rotating in and out, getting their caffeine fixes and satisfying their carb cravings.
Quinten ate lunch and then walked the three blocks to Pizza Hut, where the dinner rush had been cut off a little earlier than usual because of the snow that had started to fall, but he still
managed to end the night with an above-average tip total. He wasn’t scheduled to close, but he stuck around anyway, helping the kitchen staff shut things down before he headed out, stepping out into the restaurant’s parking lot, carrying a large sausage and mushroom pizza in his arms, ready for the walk home.
The snow was coming down hard, a good three inches of the stuff already on the ground, crisscrossed with tire tracks of the cars that had already come and gone for their dinner. Quinten stepped off the sidewalk and headed across the lot, sinking into the snow and silently thanking his uncle again for the boots.
The town was mostly deserted. Several businesses had closed early, fearing the worst from the impending storm. The white of snow illuminated everything—the road, the sidewalk, the clock in the center of town, the tops of buildings. Everything looked bright and clean and pristine. The phrase winter wonderland came to mind, and Quinten imagined a dancing team of snowmen doing the Soft Shoe or the Charleston across the city’s center square. He wished it was closer to Christmas, so the city would have already strung up all the lights and hung the wreaths and put out the decorations in the park. It would have looked spectacular tonight. All of it.
And it was so quiet. With no people and no cars, each and every one of his own footsteps crunching though the snow seemed to reverberate through the town. He felt like the only person left on Earth, and for a brief moment he allowed himself to indulge in this fantasy, wondering how different it would be if he didn’t have to keep everything that he was a secret.
Which he knew was just a metaphor for wondering what it would be like to be a normal teenage boy. Someone whose only cares were dating and sports and GPAs and parties and Nintendo. He didn’t often let himself go down this road, knowing it would only end in frustration and sadness. But something about tonight told him it was okay. Tonight, for these few remaining moments of his walk home, alone in the quiet and blinding white sparkle of the town, he could be whoever he wanted to be. Could live however he wanted to live. This was his moment.
Right now, he was free.
Ten minutes later, he turned left onto his and his mother’s street. Snow-covered cars lined the sidewalk in front of the row of townhouses like sleeping guard dogs. The streetlamps cast glowing cones of snowfall across the road. The porchlights twinkled like stars.
It was all beautiful.
Quinten walked right down the middle of the street, clinging on to his moment of freedom. Knowing that as soon as he climbed the steps up to his home’s door, unlocked the deadbolt and went inside, the feeling would vanish. Washed away by real life.
The feeling ended up vanishing much sooner.
He was halfway down the road when he heard the sound of the engine behind him, turning onto the street, followed by headlights growing in intensity, throwing his shadow far in front of him.
And Quinten knew. All of him, every fiber of his mind and body and soul came to life, alerting him, solidifying the thought that had been floating in the periphery of his mind all day.
Today was the day.
He turned around slowly, standing his ground in the middle of the road as the headlights blinded him and the sound of the engine grew louder.
And he felt it. A force of energy accompanying the headlights and the engine. A powerful source of darkness, stronger than anything he’d ever experienced, coming straight for him. Closer and closer.
Tires squished through the snow and then brakes engaged and the vehicle slowed, skidding a bit before finally coming to a complete stop a few feet away from him. Quinten stood, holding his pizza in his hands, staring into the face of an orange-and-white Volkswagen bus.
Run. Move. Do something!
The instinctive part of his brain screamed at him. Fight or flight. Survive. Live.
But Quinten stayed put. Waited. The obedient soldier. This was it. His moment. The next step in the stars’ plan. The end of his purpose. One last task.
Because the other one was out there now. The one who Quinten had felt come into existence in a way that could only be described as being present for the creation of a new star in the Universe. A shift in the entire balance of everything. The one.
And this last mission of Quinten’s was simple: Whatever little knowledge he had about the one, don’t let the darkness have it. No matter the cost.
The passenger door of the Volkswagen bus opened, squeaky hinges echoing off the buildings. A man stepped out, tall and thin and dressed in black.
He moved carefully through the snow, stepping around the door and coming closer. Quinten saw that the black outfit was actually the outfit of a priest—a cassock, he thought. It’s called a cassock.
But Quinten knew this man was not a man of God. He was, in fact, as far from it as possible.
The man offered a small smile. “Quinten, hello.”
Quinten said nothing.
Had to nearly step back at the force of Evil coming from the man before him.
“My partner and I thought you might like to go for a ride.”
Quinten said nothing. Frozen not in indecision, but suddenly in fear. Was he ready to die? Was he willing to die? Die for a person whom he’d never even met?
He looked away from the man, glancing over his shoulder and taking one last look at the front door to his home.
Mom…
“There’s no need to involve your mother in this,” the man said. “But that’s up to you.” He’d sounded completely passive, but the threat lingered in the air.
Quinten looked back to the man, met his eyes. Looked into them for a long time. Thinking. Deciding. Wondering at all the possibilities of both the past and the present.
A minute later, the road was empty, tire tracks heading toward the town’s limits, an uneaten pizza discarded in the street, the box growing soggy in the snow.
* * *
The Reverend sat still and straight in the Volkswagen’s passenger seat, staring ahead through the windshield and the falling snow as the headlights cut their path. He looked over to his partner who was driving and said, “Just another half mile or so, up on the left.”
The Surfer nodded, not saying a word. Not needing to. He gave a brief whip of his head, tossing a bit of his long blond hair out of his face, and then eased on the brakes, slowing the bus, wanting to be cautious. Wanting to avoid sliding off the road and into a tree or flipping over and then rolling end over end over end. Not so much for his safety. No, he’d be just fine. For the boy’s protection. He was precious cargo. The Surfer assumed the boy would die—would prefer it, in fact; it had been some time since he’d been in the presence of death and he was beginning to crave it—but they needed him alive for a bit longer. Until they got what they’d been sent for.
“There,” the Reverend said, pointing ahead. “See the lights?”
The motel was small, only six rooms and an office. Perfectly secluded. No other cars in the parking lot. And nobody would be coming by. Not on a night like this. Not this late and with the snow falling and the temperatures dropping. The Reverend had pulled the motel from the boy’s mind. Dug through his memories quickly while they’d stood face-to-face in the snow in the middle of the road. What a wonderfully convenient place to discover it had been. The image of the motel—and its two owners—had been filed away near the front of the boy’s active thoughts, a place he loved. People he loved. And now, ironically, the Reverend thought, it would be the place where the boy would end. But maybe they were doing the boy a favor in that regard. Because wouldn’t a person prefer to die in a place they could call home, instead of someplace foreign to them?
The Reverend could only suppose this sort of thought. It had been some time since he’d fully understood a human’s range of emotions. He turned around in his seat, looked at the boy in the back, sitting like a perfect little captive. His eyes were closed and he was breathing deeply, almost as if he were sleeping. He’d put up no fight. Offered no resistance.
And he’d said nothing.
But that would change very
soon.
“Park at the end. The last room,” the Reverend said.
The Surfer obeyed.
* * *
In the backseat of the bus, Quinten was working hard. He was building. Constructing walls in his mind. Towering walls that wrapped around his thoughts, secured his memories from outside threats. Wall after wall after wall. Thick and deeply layered. His mind spun, his brain working at dizzying speed. Despite the cold, there was sweat on his brow.
He’d felt the man in the priest’s garb poking around in his thoughts while they’d been in the road outside his townhouse, and Quinten knew exactly what he had to do. He could not escape them, could not fight them physically. But he now understood his objective was protection. Protection of any information about the one.
He had little. Almost none, in fact. But any help to the darkness was too much. Any shred of knowledge that might lead them to the one and keep him from carrying out his purpose, from being the salvation the world needed, was Quinten’s responsibility to protect. And protect it he would. With all his strength and might and power.
Tonight, he would fall. But the darkness would not win.
23
Lance stood frozen as the snow flurries whipped around him in the wind. He stared at the orange-and-white Volkswagen bus, flashes of memory of that night exploding like flash bulbs in his mind—the night his mother had sacrificed herself and propelled Lance on this journey. The night she had been murdered.
After the initial rush of fear had subsided enough for the paralysis to break, Lance’s first instinct was to turn and run. Head for the woods and get as far away as possible from the vehicle that surely had ushered along with it the cause of all Lance’s pain and anger and hatred. The two who had changed everything. The two who hunted him.
The Reverend and the Surfer. Nameless entities, soldiers for the opposing army. Creatures. Because Lance knew now, after what had happened in Sugar Beach, that the Surfer’s abilities were far beyond the world of humans and mortal beings. The Reverend … he was still somewhat of a mystery, but his dark powers were unmistakable. Not to be taken lightly. Lance had gotten lucky before and…
The Lance Brody Series: Books 3 and 4 Page 35
