by Cate Morgan
TARA
Keepers of the Flame: Origins 3
By Cate Morgan
Copyright
Copyright © 2014 by Cate Morgan. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, businesses, events or locales is purely coincidental. Reproduction in whole or part of this publication without express written consent is strictly prohibited.
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Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Excerpt from BRIGHID’S FLAME
Other Books
About The Author
CHAPTER ONE
The poor kid didn’t stand a chance. He was tall but scrawny with it, with short black hair and luminous green eyes gone wide with fear. But his fists clenched in determination, his narrow chin jutting out. The three older boys were broad shouldered and contained all the inevitability of an oncoming brick wall. Tara herself was small for her age, but she was also a fighter. Not to mention Irish, and with a reputation for having a temper that suited this fact.
Tara stepped back a pace or two. Then she ran at the bigger boys, tearing up the ground in a turn of speed born of anger. She hated the group home, hated that she was left in this strange American city because her mother was dead and no one knew why.
She barreled into the bullies, taking them by complete surprise. She snarled at them, applying elbows and kicking her feet wildly. “Get out of here!” she shouted. “Leave him alone!”
One of them grabbed her arm in a rough grasp. She turned and punched him solidly in the gut. The boy fell to his hands and knees and promptly threw up in the scraggly, dry grass,.
“What’s going on here?” Miss Bette lumbered over to break up the fight, scowling like a bulldog.
Tara tore herself away from the tussle, positioning herself defensively before the scrawny kid. “They’re trying to take his food. They’re always taking everyone’s food, just because they can.”
Miss Bette snatched her now, her grip on Tara’s upper arm worse than the bully’s had been. “I’ve told you a dozen times already I will not tolerate fighting in this house.”
“Then do something about it!” Tara demanded.
Miss Bette’s thin lips thinned still further. “Oh, don’t worry missy. I intend to.”
The closet was suffocating. Dark and dank, it smelled of unwashed coats and too many stale shoes making an uncomfortable mound beneath Tara’s backside. At some point a wool rug had been stashed in here. Apparently, it had been wet. If the smell was anything to go by.
She wasn’t sure how long she’d been locked in here. Her stomach rumbled, and she willed it to shut up. Miss Bette had to release her sooner or later—it was just a matter of being patient. Unfortunately, Tara was not good at patient.
In point of fact, it might be considered her downfall. At least, her mother had always said so. Their trip to New York from Galway had been such an exciting prospect; she had been packed for weeks ahead of time. Her mother had saved for years, socking away every spare cent she could so they might finally have the holiday they’d been dreaming of. Central Park, the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty. Seeing the city come to life before her from the plane window had been akin to magic. America.
Then the worst: Times Square. She and her mother had just come from the subway station into sheer, magnificent chaos. The crowds, the noise had been dizzying to her senses, and she’d loved very moment.
It hadn’t lasted. The noise went from dizzying to deafening, beginning with a strange, heavy absence of sound that weighed upon her until her ears popped. Then cement and glass alike shattered, and rained upon the panicked crowds. The ground shook like a pitching boat beneath her feet, and she fell.
Her mother hauled her up, half-dragging, half-carrying her back toward the subway amid a stampede of screaming tourists and pedestrians. And all the while, the city fell in upon them like a child’s sandcastle being toppled. Tara slipped and slid down the stairs, losing hold of her mother’s hand, who yelled at her to stay put. But she hadn’t been able to, washed away on the tide. She was unable, in the press, to so much as cry out.
Tara soon lost all sense of direction, as well as her hearing. The world continued to rock back and forth, trembling long after the explosions died away. In between she tried to spot her mother, to no avail. The lights flickered out in the next bombardment.
Then there was another, strangely illuminated in the glow of emergency lighting. She started forward, thinking it her mother, but soon saw it was not. Surrounded by utter, strangely still blackness, the woman gave her a sad smile, before disappearing altogether in the tumult. Then the subway entrance caved in.
There had been nothing but dark for a long time, after that. Tara had no idea how long she’d hunched between a pillar and a newsstand, crammed like a sardine in a tin. No trains came, and there was no cell service to be had.
Finally they were evacuated by emergency responders. By then she had been desperate for air, freedom from the crowded panic filling the subway tunnel. She forced herself to remain calm. Her mother had to be in here, somewhere. It was just a matter of reporting her situation to the appropriate adult and waiting until she was found.
People raced for the emergency exits, more than a few tripping as they were shoved from behind. A child wailed, piercing the rumble of evacuees. And then, finally, Tara was released into blessed air. It took her a few moments to realize what she’d walked into.
Smoke and fire. Screaming and flashing lights. Nightmare.
“I’m looking for my mother,” she told the nice doctor who checked her over.
“People are still evacuating,” the older woman responded, indicating where Tara should go next. “Children’s Services are collecting unaccompanied minors in the meantime.”
Refugees, including the children, were taken to Madison Square Garden for holding. Social workers checked her in, and she was relegated to a group of milling, lost children supervised by two supervising adults.
It wasn’t quite two weeks later before she found out a world-wide war had started, and destroyed high-population cities across the globe.
But that was after they told her, in a small office off the main arena of the Gardens as locals called it, that her mother was dead. She had been pulled from the rubble from the subway entrance’s cave in. Tara could only surmise her mother had been looking for her, or helping someone. Her mother was always helping someone. That was what she did.
This was the first time Tara resented it.
Much sooner than she expected, the knob began to rattle. Strange that she hadn’t heard Miss Bette’s slippered Godzilla feet approach. Also strange that the door creaked open, and a bright light flashed in her eyes. “Hey,” she said, raising one hand to shield her face.
“Sorry.” Definitely not Miss Bette. It sounded like one of the kids, one of the quieter ones. “I thought you might be hungry.”
The light lowered, and Tara saw the skinny kid she’d come to the defense of. “It’s you.”
“My name’s Stephen.” He crouched down, handing her a brown paper bag. “I brought half of my sandwich and an apple.”
“Tara. Thanks.” She pulled a small pocket knife on a key chain from her pocket and began slicing the apple into slices
. She handed him the first one “:Here.”
He took it in long, thin fingers that made her wonder if he was a musician of some sort. One of her neighbors back in Ireland played piano, and he had hands like that. “How many homes have you been in?”
“This is my third,” Tara said. “You?”
“Second.” He crunched on the apple slice. “You’re not from New York.”
She shook her head. “I bet you are, though?”
Stephen grinned. “Brooklyn, born and raised.”
“Then why…” she indicated the closet and the house that had the dubious pleasure of containing it.
He shrugged, clearly uncomfortable. “My parents were away when the war started. No one’s been able to find them.”
Tara finished the sandwich. “You’re going to have to learn to fight them sometime, you know.”
He frowned. “I know. I’m just not any good at it.” He paused. “You are, I noticed. You’re positively fearless.”
“I’m positively angry,” she said. “All the time. They tell me it’s got to do with grief, but all I really want is to go home.”
“You’ve no family at all?” he asked, eyebrows raised.
She shook her head. “It was just me and Mum. Now it’s just me.”
“If you want, you can have me as well,” he said shyly. “As a friend, I mean.”
Tara had learned almost immediately that one didn’t make friends in a home such as this, or in a time like this. Everything was much too transitory. But he looked so hopeful, with his big green eyes, she didn’t have the heart to send him away, especially after he’d brought her food. Perhaps she took after her mother more than she thought.
“All right,” she said, reluctance seeping from her tone. She couldn’t hold back a smile his whole scarecrow posture sagged in evident relief. “But the first thing we’re going to do is get you to land a solid punch. I can’t be with you all the time.”
