The Possessed

by L. J. Smith

Chapter 4

 

  Gabriel gave one of his wildest smiles. "I stole us a car. What about it?"

  "What about it? It's wrong, that's what. We are not going around stealing people's cars. "

  "We stole Joyce's," Gabriel said musically and mockingly.

  "Joyce was trying to kill us. That makes it - not right, maybe, but justifiable. " He got even closer to Gabriel and said with deadly anger, emphasizing each word, "There is no justification for stealing things from innocent people. "

  Gabriel was clearly enjoying himself, relaxed but ready for action any minute. He wanted to fight, Kaitlyn realized - he was dying for it. Almost as if he were feeding off the blazing energy Rob radiated. "What's your idea, country boy? How do we get out of here?" he said.

  "I don't know, but we don't steal. It's wrong. That's all. " And for Rob, it was all, Kaitlyn knew. It was that simple for him.

  She was chewing her lips, uneasily aware that it wasn't so simple for her. Half of her was impressed that Gabriel had gotten a car, and she had a sneaking feeling she'd be happy to ride away in it if she weren't nervous that they'd get caught. A car would be something to hold on to, an anchor against the uprooted, drifting feeling of being homeless.

  But Rob would never go for it. Dear Rob. Dear honorable Rob, who was completely and utterly pigheaded and who could be the most exasperating boy on earth. Who was now glaring at Gabriel challengingly.

  Gabriel bared his teeth in response. "And what about the old man? You don't think he's going to give up, do you? He'll have the police after us - and maybe other people. He has a lot of friends, a lot of connections. "

  It was true. Kaitlyn remembered the papers she had seen in Mr. Z's hidden room. There had been letters from judges, CEOs of big companies, people in the government. Lists of names of important people.

  "We need to get out of here - now," Gabriel said. "And that means we need transportation. " His eyes were locked on Rob's. Neither of them willing to give in.

  They're going to fight, Kaitlyn thought, and she looked at Anna in despair. Anna had paused in the middle of brushing the dark and shining raven wing of her hair. She looked back worriedly at Kait.

  We've got to stop them, she said.

  I know, Kait thought back. But how?

  Come up with another solution.

  Kaitlyn couldn't think of another solution - and then it came to her.

  Marisol, she thought.

  Marisol. The research assistant back at the Institute. She'd been with Mr. Zetes even before Joyce, and she'd known about his plans. She'd tried to warn Kaitlyn - and Mr. Z had put her in a coma for it.

  Kait said it aloud, with mounting excitement. "Marisol!"

  It broke into Rob and Gabriel's stareout. "What?" Rob said.

  Kaitlyn scrambled to her feet. "Don't you see - if anybody would help us, if anybody would believe us - and we're in Oakland. I'm sure Joyce said she was from Oakland. "

  "Kait, calm down. What are you - "

  "I'm saying we should go to Marisol's family. They live here in Oakland. We could probably walk. And they might help us, Rob. They might understand this whole horrible thing. "

  The others were staring at Kait - but it was a good staring, full of dawning wonder.

  "You know, they might, at that," Rob said.

  "Marisol may even have told them something about it - maybe not in detail, but she might have given hints. She liked to give hints," Kait said, remembering. "And they've got to be upset over what happened.

  Their daughter's fine, a little moody but perfectly healthy - and then one day she falls down in a coma.

  Don't you think they'd have their suspicions?"

  "It depends," Gabriel said. He looked dark and cold - cheated of his confrontation. "If she was taking drugs - "

  "Joyce said she was taking drugs. And personally, I'm not inclined to trust anything Joyce said - are you?" Kaitlyn tilted her chin at him and to her surprise got a flash of amusement from the gray, chill eyes.

  "Anyway, it's the best chance we've got," Lewis said. Always quick to see the bright side of things, he was smiling now, his dark eyes sparkling. "It's someplace to go - and maybe they'll feed us. "

  Anna twisted her hair into a long tail and stood gracefully, and Kaitlyn realized it was settled. Two minutes later they were walking down the sidewalk, looking for a phone book. Kaitlyn felt unkempt and empty - she hadn't eaten since lunch yesterday - but surprisingly fit.

  The street was deserted, now, and although the fenced-in buildings were just as decrepit, the whole place looked a little safer. Lewis was cheerful enough to pull out his camera and take a picture.

  "For posterity," he said.

  "Maybe it's better not to look like a tourist," Anna suggested in her gentle voice.

  "If anybody comes near us I'll take care of them," said Gabriel. His thoughts were still black with jagged red streaks - leftover from his fight with Rob.

  Kait looked at him. "You know, I was meaning to ask you. Mr. Z said you couldn't link with another mind once you were in a stable link with us - but you linked with that policeman, and with Mr. Z and Joyce earlier. "

  Gabriel shrugged. "The old man was wrong," he said briefly.

  Again, Kaitlyn felt a whisper of anxiety in her blood. Gabriel was hiding something from all of them. Only Gabriel, she thought, could manage that so easily in the web.

  And despite his barriers, she could sense something - strange - in him. Something that had changed in the last night.

  The crystal, she thought. Mr. Zetes had forced Gabriel into contact with a giant crystal, a monstrosity of jagged edges that housed unthinkable psychic power.

  What if it had done something to Gabriel? Something. . . permanent?

  "Gabriel," she said abruptly, "how's your forehead?"

  He put his fingers to it quickly, then, deliberately, dropped his hand to his side. "Fine," he said. "Why?"

  "I just wanted to look at it. " Before he could stop her, she reached up herself, brushing his dark hair aside. And there on his forehead she could see it, shadowy on the pale skin. Not the kind of scab she would have expected from the cut the crystal had given him. It looked more like a scar or a birthmark - a crescent-shaped dimness.

  "Right over your third eye," Kaitlyn said involuntarily, just as Gabriel grabbed her wrist in a bruising grip.

  She and he had both stopped dead. He stared at her, and there was something frightening in his gray gaze. Something menacing and alien that she'd never seen before.

  The third eye - the seat of psychic power. And Gabriel's powers had been greater ever since his contact with the crystal. . .

  He'd always been the strongest of all of them, psychically. It scared Kait to think what he might become if he got any stronger.

  "What's wrong with you guys?" Lewis was demanding. The others were far ahead. Rob was walking back toward them, his brows drawn together.

  Then Anna, who was farthest down the street, called, "I see a phone!"

  Gabriel released Kait's wrist, almost throwing it, and started toward Anna briskly.

  Leave it alone, Kaitlyn told herself. For now. For now, concentrate on surviving.

  They found Marisol's name among a flood of Diazes in the phone book. Lewis wasn't familiar with Ironwood Boulevard, the street where she lived, but they studied a map at a gas station.

  It was almost nine-thirty before they arrived, and Kaitlyn was hot, dusty, and starving. It was what Lewis called a pueblo house, a fake adobe house covered with pinky-brown stucco. No one answered the doorbell.

  "They're not home," Kaitlyn said in despair. "I was stupid. They're at the hospital with Marisol; Joyce said they went every day. "

  "We'll wait. Or come back," Rob said firmly, his resolution and his temper undisturbed. They were heading toward the shade of the garage when a boy, a little older than they were, came around from the back of the house.

>   He had no shirt and his thin, sinewy body looked tough. Kait would never have dared approach him on the street. But he also had curly hair that shone in the morning light like mahogany, and a full, rather sullen mouth.

  In other words, thought Kaitlyn, he looks like Marisol.

  For several heartbeats they all just stared at each other, the boy obviously resenting these intruders on his property, ready to fight them off. Rob and Gabriel were reacting by bristling. Then Kaitlyn stepped forward impulsively.

  "Don't think we're crazy," she said. "But we're friends of Marisol's and we've run away from Mr. Zetes and we don't know where else to go. We've been on the road since last night and it took us hours to walk here. And - well, we thought you might help us. "

  The boy stared harder, through narrowed eyes that had long, dark lashes. Finally he said slowly,

  "Friends of Marisol's?"

  "Yes," Kaitlyn said firmly, tucking away in her mind all the memories of how Marisol had snubbed her and terrorized her. That didn't matter now.

  The boy looked each of them over, his expression sour. Just when Kaitlyn was convinced he was going to tell them to go away, he jerked his chin toward the house.

  "Come on in. I'm Tony. Marisol's brother. "

  At the door he asked casually, "You a bruja? A witch?" He was looking at her eyes.

  "No. I can do - things. I draw pictures and eventually they come true. "

  He nodded, still casual. Kaitlyn was vastly grateful that he seemed to believe her. He accepted the idea of psychic powers without surprise.

  And despite his surly looks, he was - thoughtful. Generous. One minute after they were in the house he rubbed his chin, cast a sideways glance at Lewis, and muttered, "You been on the road, huh? You guys hungry? I was going to eat breakfast. "

  A lie, Kaitlyn thought. He must have seen how Lewis was sniffing at a lingering aroma of eggs and bacon. She warmed to him immediately.

  "There's a lot of stuff people brought over when Marisol got sick," he said, leading them into the kitchen.

  From the refrigerator he pulled out a giant baking dish full of what looked like corn husks and a smaller one full of noodles. "Tamales," he said hefting the big one. He put down the small one. "And chow mein. "

  Fifteen minutes later they were all seated around the big kitchen table, and Kait was finishing up the story of their flight from the Institute. She told how Joyce had recruited them, how they'd come to California, how Marisol had warned them that things at the Institute weren't what they seemed, and how Mr. Zetes had finally revealed himself last night.

  "He's completely evil," she said finally and looked at Tony uncertainly. But again he seemed unsurprised, merely grunting. Rob had his pile of folders and papers ready as proof, but it didn't seem necessary.

  Staring down into a tamale, Kaitlyn asked the others, Now how do we tell him Mr. Zetes put his sister in a coma?

  From every one of them - except Gabriel - she felt discomfort. Gabriel was toying with his food, apparently not interested in eating. He sat a little away from the rest of them, as usual, and looked as if he were farther away mentally.

  Anna spoke up. "How is Marisol?"

  "The same. The doctors say she's always going to be the same. "

  "We're sorry," Lewis said, wiggling his fork inside a corn husk.

  "Did you ever think," Rob said quietly, "that there was anything - strange - about what happened to her?"

  Tony looked at him directly. "Everything was strange. Marisol didn't take drugs. I heard some stuff last week about how she was supposed to be on medication - but it wasn't true. "

  "Joyce Piper told us she was on medication. She told us Marisol was seeing a psychiatrist. . . " Rob's voice trailed off, because Tony was shaking his head vigorously. "Not true?"

  "She saw a shrink once or twice last year, because of the really weird stuff that was going on. That was when she worked at Zetes's house. He had some sick people there - for a study, Marisol said. "

  "The pilot study? You know about that?" Kaitlyn leaned forward eagerly. "Marisol mentioned it - a study with other psychics like the one Mr. Zetes was doing with us. "

  Rob was sorting through the folders, pulling out one Kaitlyn had seen before. It was a file jacket with a photo of a brown-haired girl labeled SABRINA JESSICA GALLO, BLACK LIGHTNING PILOT STUDY.

  Scrawled across the label in thick red ink was the word TERMINATED.

  Tony was nodding. "Bri Gallo. She was one of them. I think they had six all together. They were into some really bizarre crap. Sick. Zetes had this mental domination over them. "

  He shifted, seemed to consider, then said, "I'll tell you a story. There was a guy who worked with Marisol, another assistant. He didn't like the boss, thought Zetes was crazy. He used to fight, you know?

  Talk back. Show up late. And finally he decided he was going to talk to a newspaper about what was going on at that house. He told Marisol that one night. She said the next morning when she saw him, he was - different. He didn't talk back anymore, and he sure didn't talk about any newspapers. He just did his work like he was sleepwalking. Like somebody enbrujado - under a spell. "

  "A spell?" Kait wondered. "Or drugs?"

  "Stranger than drugs. He kept on working there, and he kept on getting paler and sleepier. Marisol said he had this blank look, like he was there but his soul wasn't. " Tony glanced toward the hallway where a large candle burned in a niche beneath a statue of the Virgin Mary. Simply and unemotionally he said, "I think Boss Zetes works black magic. "

  Kaitlyn glanced at Rob, who was listening intently, his eyes amber-brown and grim. He met her gaze and said silently, It's as good a word as any for what he does with that crystal. And maybe Mr. Z does have some mental powers we don't know about.

  Aloud, Kaitlyn said, "He used drugs on Marisol. Joyce Piper gave her something - I don't know what, but I saw it in a vision. "

  At first Tony seemed not to have heard. He said, "I told her to get out. A long time ago. But she was ambitious, you know? She made money, she bought a car, she was going to get her own place. She said she could handle things. "

  Kaitlyn, who had always been poor, could understand that.

  "She did try to get out in the end," Rob said. "Or at least to get us out. And that was why Mr. Z had to stop her. "

  Tony grabbed a kitchen knife and slammed it into the wooden table.

  Kait's heart almost jumped out of her body. Anna froze, her dark owll eyes on Tony's face. Lewis winced, and Rob frowned.

  Gabriel, his eyes on the quivering knife handle, smiled.

  "Lo siento," Tony muttered. "I'm sorry. But he shouldn't have done that to Marisol. "

  Almost without thinking, Kaitlyn put her hand on his. Back in Ohio she would have laughed at the idea.

  She'd hated boys, loud, smelly, interfering boys. But she understood exactly what Tony was feeling.

  "Rob wants to stop him - Mr. Zetes," she said. "And we have this idea that if we can get to this certain place, we might get help. There are people there who act like they're against the Institute. "

  "Can those people help Marisol?"

  Kaitlyn had to be honest. "I don't know. But if you want, we'll ask them. I promise. "

  Tony nodded. He took his hand from under Kaitlyn's and wiped his eye absently.

  "We're not even sure who they are," Rob said. "We think they live somewhere up north, and we have an idea of what the location looks like. We figure it may take us a while to find them, and we'll be on the road all that time. The only problem is that we don't know how to get there. "

  "No," Gabriel broke sarcastically, speaking for the first time since they'd arrived. "That's not the only problem. The other problem is that we're broke. And stranded. "

  Tony looked at him, then smiled. It was a crooked smile, but genuine, as if he liked Gabriel's directness.

  "We thought we might talk to your parents," Kaitlyn said delicatel
y. "If we go to our own parents they'll find us, you see. And our parents wouldn't understand. "

  Tony shook his head. He stared out the window into a neat backyard as if thinking. At last he said,

  "Don't wait for my parents. It'll only upset them. "

  "But - "

  "Come on outside. "

  Kaitlyn and the others exchanged looks. The web was as blank with surprise as their faces. They followed.

  The backyard was filled with dormant rosebushes. There was an extension of the driveway behind an iron gate. On the driveway was a silver-blue van.

  "Hey, that's the van from the Institute," Lewis said.

  Tony had stopped and was regarding it with folded arms. He shook his head. "No, it's Marisol's. It was hers. It is hers. " He stood for a moment, shaking his head as if trying to figure this out, then turned abruptly to Kait. "You take it. "

  "What?"

  "I'll get some stuff - sleeping bags and things. We've got an old tent in the garage. "

  Kaitlyn was overwhelmed. "But - "

  "You need stuff for a trip, right? Otherwise you're going to die out there. You're never going to make it. "

  He shook off Kaitlyn's reaching hand and backed up, but he met her eyes. His voice was almost a growl.

  "And you're going to fight him, the bastard that hurt Marisol. Nobody else is. Nobody else can, because you need magic to fight magic. You take the van. "

  His eyes were Marisol's eyes, too, Kaitlyn realized. Rich brown almost the color of his hair. She could feel her own eyes filling, but she held his gaze. "Thank you," she said softly.

  And we'll do whatever we can to get them to help Marisol, she thought. She knew the others could hear her, but it was really a private promise.

  "We better get you out of here before my mom gets back," Tony said. He took Rob and Lewis into the garage. Kait, Anna, and Gabriel examined the van.

  "It's perfect," Kaitlyn whispered, looking around the inside. She'd ridden in it before, to and from school, but she'd never really looked at it. To her eyes now, there seemed to be square miles of room. There were two bucket seats in front and two long bench seats in back, with lots of space between them.

  There still seemed to be miles of room once Tony piled in blankets, sleeping bags, and pillows. Riches untold, Kaitlyn thought, fingering a thick down-filled comforter. He even took Gabriel and Rob back into the house and lent them spare clothes. Finally he put groceries from the refrigerator into a paper bag.

  "It won't last long with five of you, but it's something," he said.

  "Thank you," Kait said again as they got ready to leave. Rob was in the driver's seat; Gabriel in the other front bucket seat. Anna and Lewis were in the bench seat behind them. Kaitlyn had ended up in the rear

  bench seat - too far from Rob, but no matter. They'd change places later.

  "You just get Zetes, right?" Tony said, then slid the door of the van shut.

  We're going to try, Kaitlyn thought. She waved as Rob backed out of the driveway.

  "Keep going down this street and I'll tell you how to get back on Highway 880," Lewis said. He was studying a map of California that Tony had supplied. When they were on the highway, he changed it for a map of the United States.

  "Well, we've got clothes, we've got food, and we've got sleeping gear. And we certainly have transport,"

  Rob said, settling back in his bucket seat and running a caressing hand over the steering wheel.

  "Now - exactly where are we going?"