Weaver
Page 6
Chapter 5
4:47 p.m.
Afternoon was beginning to creep toward evening as Moira McBain and Andy Hall sat in their golden sedan down the street from the Cronlords’ house. At Moira’s insistence, they had sat in the hospital parking lot the entire day, watching the doors for Moira and Alex to exit. This had not happened until just after three p.m., when Ainsling had emerged from the Southwestern Medical Center carrying a limp Alex in her arms. She had taken the girl to her car and placed Alex gingerly in the backseat, then driven home. The car had disappeared into the garage – and no one had gone into or out of the Cronlord house since.
“You know,” Andy put forward good-naturedly. “It is possible she’s just sick.”
“Then why wasn’t she on the admit list? You saw them coming out of the hospital – whatever they did to her in there, it practically knocked her out. No way you get in there for a treatment like that without being admitted,” Moira reasoned, her hardened grey eyes staring at the Cronlord house as if she could see through its brick walls.
“Look, I agree it’s suspicious,” Andy conceded. “But have you ever heard the old expression? ‘To err is human, to really fuck things up requires a computer’? There could have just been computer error, you kn –“
Before he could even finish the sentence, Moira shot him a look which practically screamed, “You can’t possibly be serious.” Before she could actually say anything to that effect, however, a wiry young man walked past their car, a backpack slung over his back and a notebook under one arm. He was black, the young man, and had a carefree stride and a big grin on his face. Andy turned his head to see what his partner was looking at, and saw the young man. He looked back at Moira and raised a skeptical eyebrow. “What?” he asked. “You think that kid’s one of the arsonists?”
As Andy spoke, the young man turned and walked up the sidewalk to the Cronlords’ house and rang the doorbell. A moment later, Moira’s eyes flared as Ainsling appeared in the doorway. She and the young man conversed briefly, and he handed her the notebook he carried under one arm. They exchanged brief conversation, and both agents, who were trained by the FBI to read body language, could see that the young man wasn’t particularly comfortable with Ainsling Cronlord.
“I don’t think he likes her much more than you do, partner,” Andy teased, giving Moira a playful punch in the arm.
“Yeah,” Moira chuckled, though she didn’t take her eyes from the conversation.
Andy put a hand on Moira’s shoulder and gave a gentle squeeze. “Come on, partner. I seriously don’t think that kid’s got kerosene in his backpack,” he joked. And then, impulsively, he added, “Buy you a drink?”
This turned Moira’s head, and she looked at him with surprise, as if seeing him in a whole new light. Her cheeks flushed slightly – a rare sight in a woman normally unaccustomed to vulnerability. “Are – are you –“
Before she could finish, however, Andy’s eyes caught on something. On the other side of the street from the Cronlords’ house, leaning against a wall, stood a young man, clad in black, with sculpted facial features and brown hair and eyes. He was clearly trying to hide himself from view – and just as clearly watching the Cronlords’ house intently.
“Moira,” Andy whispered gravely, pointing behind her at the lurking man.
--
Alex crept out of her room and down the hall, stopping at the stairs. They posed a problem for her – the stairs in her house were old, and made of wood. They were virtually certain to creak when she stepped on them, making noise which would attract her mother’s attention. And yet she needed to get downstairs if she wanted to stop the harm that was coming to the red-haired woman she had seen in her dream. As she pondered the dilemma, she heard voices from downstairs.
“ … sure Alex will appreciate this,” her mother said to whoever was at the door.
“I hope so,” came Tyler’s voice in answer. Tyler! Her heart soared at remembering that there was one person, at least, that she could still trust unequivocally. Her determination to find a way downstairs increased. “How’s she feeling, anyway?”
“Not that well,” Ainsling answered. “The attack yesterday left her really banged up. Do you have any idea who it was? Who attacked her?”
Tyler was silent for a long moment. And then, quietly enough that Alex could barely hear it, he answered by asking, “You know about that?”
“Of course I do,” Ainsling laughed dismissively. “You don’t think she can hide something like that from her mother, do you?”
“I guess not,” Tyler laughed tentatively, and Alex could tell from the tone in his voice that, in fact, he absolutely believed that she could hide the incident from Ainsling.
“You didn’t answer my question, Tyler,” Ainsling pressed, a tone of cold authority in her voice that Alex recognized very well.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Cronlord.” Alex could hear Tyler squirm as he answered. “What was the question?”
“Who attacked her?” Ainsling repeated, her tone suggesting that she was offended at having to repeat herself. “What do you know about him?”
“Oh. It was some new kid named Lucian,” Tyler answered off-handedly. “Lucian … Hunt, I think. Tall, dark, and freaky.”
“Freaky?” she repeated, radiating cold authority once more. “Freaky how?”
“He just – I’ve never seen anybody move that fast, you know? It was – it was like I was watchin’ a fight scene in an action movie, except it was real, it was –“
“You saw the fight?” Ainsling’s interest audibly intensified.
“I helped Alex,” he told her. “Tossed her my pocket knife to use on Lucian. I just wish she’d killed him.”
“What makes you think she didn’t?” Ainsling asked. Alex recognized her mother’s tone – she sounded not at all surprised to learn that Lucian might still be alive – at the same time that she noted Ainsling’s wording. The question suggested, not fear for her daughter, but curiosity about the extent of Tyler’s knowledge about Lucian.
“Cause he showed up at school today,” Tyler grumbled, and Alex’s heart froze in her chest. So Lucian was not only still alive, but not even seriously injured. And he had seen Tyler enter the fight. Which meant … “Hard to do that if you’re dead. ‘Less you’re a vampire or something,” Tyler snorted. “And the way he was giving me the evil eye at school today, I’m pretty sure he’s coming for me next.”
Alex’s dread reached a crescendo inside of her, and for a moment she was tempted to just run down the stairs, throwing caution to the wind, and talk to her friend. It was Alex’s fault, after all, that he was now in danger – she was the one who had stupidly chosen to go off alone with Lucian, despite literally knowing exactly what would happen if she did. Her idiocy should not cost her friend his life.
“Well,” Ainsling answered, a dismissive note entering her voice. “Thanks again for your help, Tyler. I’m sure Alex will appreciate the notes.” And then she heard the door close.
That was the straw that broke the frayed back of Alex’s patience. Already disoriented from whatever the doctor had done to her and reeling from her mother’s seeming betrayal, Ainsling’s casual dismissal of the threat to her friend’s safety sent an overpowering surge of anger through Alex. She stormed down the stairs, abandoning all pretense of stealth. “How could you do that?”
“Ah, you emerge,” came her mother’s sardonic voice, though Ainsling was not yet in sight. Alex heard footsteps, and a few moments later, Ainsling’s curvy form appeared at the bottom of the stairwell, exuding both authority and indignation. “Care to tell me why you felt the need to hide from me?”
“Because I thought you were taking reckless chances with my safety,” Alex answered defiantly. “Can’t imagine where I got that idea.”
Ainsling raised an eyebrow. “And what exactly does that mean?”
“You heard Tyler!” Alex answered breathlessly, struck dumb by her mother’s apparent unconcern for the deadly danger.
“Lucian’s gonna kill him! We’ve got to –“
“Lucian is not going to kill him,” she replied, with calm certainty. “And even if he does, now that we know who he is, we can make sure he doesn’t harm anyone else.”
“’We’ who??” Alex demanded, anger now supplemented by confusion.
“My associates and I, of course,” Ainsling answered, as if this were obvious. “With your help, if things go as I’m hoping they will at the doctor’s office the next few days.”
“Oh no!” Alex screamed, actually seeing red at her mother’s suggestion that she intended to put Alex through more repeats of today. “I am not going back there!”
“Why certainly you are.” Ainsling sounded as if she thought Alex’s protests were completely ridiculous. “It’s what you were born for, after all.”
A sickening feeling of dread began to fester in Alex’s stomach, accompanying the rage and the shock. “What … what are you talking about?”
“Being a Weaver,” Ainsling answered. “Stopping the Xorda.”
“The what?”
“The Xorda. The race your young friend Lucian belongs to.”
“ … When did this house turn into a science-fiction novel?”
Before Ainsling could answer, Tyler’s deafening, blood-curdling scream issued forth from outside.
--
Moira shrieked as she saw it. The young-looking man in black bent at the knees, his muscles tensing, and leapt into the air. His leap carried him over the lawn of the house which he was using to hide himself and then over the street, arcing higher and higher until his feet were level with the Cronlords’ own rooftop. At that point, he reached the apex of his jump and began arcing downward, letting out an animalistic roar that Moira wouldn’t have thought human vocal chords were capable of, descending on the young man just starting to turn away from the Cronlords’ house.
“Definitely not normal,” Moira breathed, reaching for her sidearm as she unbuckled her seatbelt and pushed open her car door. She didn’t even bother looking back at Andy or listening for any reply as she leapt out of the car, kneeling behind the car door and rolling down the window, using the door itself as a shield. “FBI!” she shrieked at the rapidly descending figure. “ON THE GROUND! NOW! HANDS ON YOUR HEAD!”
The figure took no notice of Moira, reaching out its arms with claws poised to grasp the Tyler’s face or neck. The young man dove narrowly out of the way, avoiding whatever his attacker had planned, and as soon as he was clear, Moira fired off four shots at the black-clad attacker. One of them zinged by, narrowly missing the man’s throat, but the other three hit him in the chest and right arm. But he did not drop, did not stagger in pain – indeed, the hits didn’t even seem to slow him down.
The attacker dove for the young man, and Moira abandoned her attempts to shoot him from cover and charged toward the scuffle, not even bothering to close the car door. As she was closing in, she heard a shriek from one side of her. “TYLER!!” Moira cast a quick glance over her shoulder and saw a young blond girl, perhaps fifteen years old, standing in the Cronlords’ doorway. Moira recognized her immediately from the picture – it was Alex Cronlord.
Shit, no, girl, don’t make this messier than it already is. “Stay inside!” Moira barked at Alex harshly. “That’s an order!”
But Alex, of course, had never met Moira. She therefore had no idea that the woman was an FBI agent, or in any way authorized to give her orders. So Alex did what an impulsive teenager might be expected to do: she leapt into the fray, hands reaching for the black-clad attacker, hoping to push him away from the other young man.
Moira stopped in her tracks just a few paces from the attacker, swearing viciously under her breath. With two civilians in the mix, firearms were no longer an option. She assessed the scene quickly with her eyes. Alex had pushed the attacker away from the other young man – Tyler, apparently --and the two were locked in a grapple in the middle of the street as Tyler got slowly to his feet, rubbing his head. Moira looked back to her partner, who was racing forward to catch up, looking almost panicked.
“Andy!” she called to him. “Block off the other end of the street! Don’t let anyone enter!”
Andy looked hesitant, as if he wanted to help Moira in the scuffle, but he nodded in acquiescence. He turned and took off at a run toward the other end of the street, replacing his weapon in its holster at his side. As he did, Moira reached downward for the collar of the attacker’s shirt. He was on top of Alex now, pinning her to the ground, holding her there helpless as she screamed. With a violent jerking motion, Moira grabbed his collar and hoisted him off of her, cold-cocking him with the butt of her firearm. “No jail bait for you, pal,” she rasped harshly in the attacker’s ear.
In response, he turned in her grip, brown eyes glittering hungrily as he flashed her a predatory grin. “That’s okay,” he hissed. “You look tasty too.”
His strength was overpowering – his hands wrapped around Moira’s own neck, and perhaps it was the blinding speed at which they came, but the fingers looked as if they ended in points, like claws. As Moira struggled to breathe, he forced her to the ground. Then he was on top of her, his fingers slowly loosening around her neck. “I shouldn’t need to do this anymore,” he whispered in her ear, a hungry quality in his voice. “This much exposure at this close range – you should find me nigh irresistible right now.” And then he pulled his head up, locked his brown eyes on her grays, and a decidedly predatory quality was in them. “But some girls like it rough. Maybe you’re one of them?” he taunted her.
Moira had no idea what the man was talking about – irresistible was the absolute last thing she found him. But it didn’t matter – he had released her throat and restored her breathing, which was all the opening she needed. “Yeah,” she whispered harshly. “Matter of fact, I do.” Then she spat in his eyes.
“Agggh!” he cried, recoiling in shock as he reached a hand up to wipe his eyes. Taking advantage of the distraction, Moira shoved her attacker off of her and then leapt to her feet as if each of her legs contained a coiled spring. Now he was on the ground, and she standing. She pointed her sidearm at him before she could get up.
“No way you live at this range,” she stated coldly, and then fired three point-blank shots into his chest.
The man lay there, un-moving, blood flowing through the holes Moira had created in his black clothing. “Thank God!” Alex shrieked, starting to run toward Moira. “I don’t know how he’s still alive, he tried this on me yesterday and –” With a bestial roar, the black-clad man propelled himself off the ground, his body streaking upward between Moira and Alex -- straight toward Tyler.
Moira and Alex shrieked, but the attacker moved with such impossible speed that they were powerless to stop him, and Tyler was powerless to avoid him as the attacker grabbed Tyler, sinking his teeth into the young man’s neck. Tyler gave a moment’s scream, and then fell silent, breathing in short, intermittent gasps as his eyes bugged out, body seeming completely paralyzed. Alex screamed, starting to move forward several times, but looking panicked, as if she were afraid that anything she did might simply make matters worse.
Moira had no such hesitation, closing the distance between herself and the two grappling men – or rather, the one grappling and the one near-paralyzed and convulsing – in a few quick strides and reaching out her hands to pull the attacker off of Tyler. But before she could take hold of the attacking man, fire lanced out as if from nowhere, igniting the attacker, whose head jerked up from Tyler’s neck as he screamed in agony.
“NO!!” Moira shrieked, head whipping around to see where the fire had come from. And there, inches away, stood Ainsling Cronlord, calmly wielding an acetylene torch, soberly directing the fire at the attackers’ back. “SHUT THAT OFF! WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING??”
“Mom!” came another feminine scream from behind Moira and Ainsling. Alex pointed desperately at Tyler. The fire from the acetylene torch had now spread and was rapidly engulfing
his body too. But Ainsling remained calm, wielding the weapon as if it were an extension of her own body.
“Watch,” she said calmly, in a voice just above a whisper. Moira turned horrified eyes to the two men – boys, really – both of whom were now wreathed in flame. And, as she did, the dark-clad attacker simply … disintegrated. His previously-completely-solid form became only a storm of ashes, which fell like dark snowflakes to the ground. Moira stood frozen in shock as Ainsling turned off the torch.
Alex, however, had a different reaction. Face streaked with tears, she ran to Tyler’s prone body, touching the burned cheek, then the chest. Openly sobbing, she finally thought to check for a pulse. Then she turned a hateful look on her mother. “He’s DEAD!” she shrieked. “You killed him! You fucking KILLED hi –“
And then she blinked out of existence.
“ALEX!”Ainsling and Moira screamed and moved as one, rushing toward the spot where the girl had last been. But she wasn’t there anymore. The two women had little time to react to this development before a car pulled up in the Cronlords’ driveway.
“What the hell happened here?” Mr. Cronlord asked, getting out of the car.
--
Alex heard her mother and the red-haired woman scream her name, and she was confused. She crouched only a few feet from where they stood, in plain sight, and she hadn’t moved. She saw the two women start to run toward her, and started to call out to them – but she felt a hand clap itself over her mouth. An icy chill ran down her spine as other hands grabbed her arms and started to drag her backward. She tried to scream, but all sound was muffled by the hand over her mouth as her unknown assailants dragged her, thrashing, across the street.
As well as thrashing desperately in her attempt to escape, Alex’s eyes fixed on her mother and the red-haired woman, certain they would give chase, overpowering her assailants if she could not. But she watched incredulously as they stopped at Tyler’s burned body, standing on the spot where she’d crouched just moments before, turning their heads from side to side and apparently looking for her, a definite note of panic in their expressions.
I’m right here, she mentally screamed at them. Why can’t you see me??
As this thought ran through Alex’s mind, she saw her father’s car pull into the driveway, distracting both her mother’s and the red headed woman’s attention. She had a vague, fleeting hope that he might see her and run to help, but he did not. She heard him scream “What the hell happened here?” as her assailants dragged her behind a clump of bushes, where they stopped.
A youngish man – a boy, really, surely not more than a few years older than Alex herself – appeared in her line of vision. He had long, black hair tied back in a ponytail, and a face that was at once boyish and haggard. From the set of his eyes and his jaw, he looked aged beyond his years. He held a finger to his lips, making a shushing noise. “We’re not gonna hurt you, we’re here to help.”
Alex shot the boy a furious look, making clear how much she believed that.
“Fine,” the boy shot back. “You wanna go be a lab rat some more, be my guest.”
Alex’s eyes went wide.
“Yeah, I know all about your mother and what she’s doing to you,” the young man told her. He signaled to whomever had a hand over Alex’s mouth, and that person released her. “You can go back with her, or you can come with me. It’s entirely up to you.”
“Come where?” Alex asked. Her expression was rueful and her tone sharp. She looked behind her to find out who had been muzzling her – and saw a young woman with waist-length coffee hair trailing behind her. She looked as if she had once been very beautiful, but deep grooves and creases now ran across her face, forming a map-like pattern over her features. Alex thought she saw a deep sadness in the girl’s eyes. “And who are you?” Alex asked, but the young woman did not reply.
The young man answered Alex’s first question. “The nest we runaway lab rats have made for ourselves,” he told her, his eyes glittering.
Alex’s eyes widened. “I’m not the only one?” she asked
The young man smiled tightly at her. “Not by a long shot. Wanna hear more?”
Alex thought for a moment. She was still resentful of being manhandled, but she had little desire to return to her mother after the day’s events. And if there truly were others like her, perhaps they could help her make sense of what Ainsling had done to her, or even reverse it. “I’m in,” she told them quickly.
--
5:22 p.m.
The four of them gathered in the Cronlords’ living room. Andy sat next to Moira on the couch, while Mrs. Cronlord sat in the same large armchair she had during their last visit. Moira had to grudgingly admire Ainsling’s poise – even now, her manner seemed almost imperial, infinitely confident and self-certain. Mr. Cronlord stood nervously against a wall, arms crossed over his chest.
“So, would somebody like to tell me what the hell is going on here?” Mr. Cronlord asked, his insistent voice belying his nervous posture. “Start with the part where my daughter just disappeared before my eyes, and then move on to the man that spontaneously combusted and the dead kid lying in our driveway.”
“He wasn’t a man,” Ainsling answered, only the slightest trace of anxiety infecting her voice, which was otherwise every bit as self-sure as her posture. “He was a Xorda.”
“A what?” Mr. Cronlord’s head jerked over to look at his wife. He’d clearly been expecting answers from the pair of FBI agents, and was surprised when Ainsling spoke first.
“A Xorda. As close as our world has to demons – vampires. Except they don’t feed on blood, they drink your soul ‘till you have nothing left. They also secrete a powerful pheromone that makes them nigh-irresistible to members of the opposite sex.”
Mr. Cronlord’s eyes bugged out. “The – what??” he asked, clearly in disbelief.
“So this is the holy war nonsense you people think you’re fighting,” Moira scoffed.
Andy sat there in silence, his expression inscrutable.
“The Xorda you saw ‘spontaneously combust’ was named Lucian Hunt. He was masquerading as a classmate of Alex’s – though I’m sure he was much more than fifteen years old. He tried to change her yesterday afternoon.”
“He – what??” Mr. Cronlord asked again.
“He tried to change her. To make her into a Xorda. Feast on her soul, and then put a little bit of his own in her. She fought him off – I believe with help from her friend Tyler. He’s the dead child you saw outside. Unfortunately, neither of them knew that being stabbed in the chest won’t kill a Xorda. Only fire will do that.”
“Fi – what??” Mr. Cronlord repeated.
“Can you say anything else?” Andy asked with a chuckle.
But Moira had a different question. “You seem to know an awful lot of details about this fight that supposedly occurred yesterday. He attacked her, Tyler helped take him down, they stabbed him in the chest …”
“If the question in all of that is ‘How,’” Ainsling retorted. “It’s because I’ve had associates of mine quietly following Alex, watching her, since school began on Monday.”
This startled Mr. Cronlord, who looked at his wife with a mixture of surprise and horror. “Why?” Moira asked.
“Perhaps for the same reason you and your partner have been following me all day today,” Ainsling returned defiantly. “Or are you going to tell me there is another reason you were on hand so quickly after Lucian attacked?”
Moira was silent, her face stony.
“All right!” Mr. Cronlord barked emphatically, interrupting the staring (and sniping) contest. “All this other stuff can wait. The question now – the only important question now – is where is Alex?”
“I don’t know,” Moira told him, meeting his eyes. Whatever her grievances with Ainsling, he was not the enemy. He was just a scared father. “I saw the same thing you did – it looked like she just blinked out of existence. With all due respect, sir, may I suggest that it
might have something to do with whatever your wife’s been doing to her.”
The stunned look returned to Mr. Cronlord’s face. But this time he directed it at Moira. “What the hell are you talking about, Agent McBain?” he asked.
“She’s part of the Wells Society. Do you know what they do to their children?” she asked him, meeting his eyes with a cold glare. “I do.”
“What’s a ‘Wells Society’?” he asked, not sounding convinced in the slightest.
“Group that thinks they’re holy warriors and that abusing their children will shield them from the apocalypse, as far as I can tell,” Moira answered.
Now Mr. Cronlord was downright indignant. “I beg your pardon, Agent McBain. I’ve been with my wife for eighteen years, and she’s never once laid a hand on our Alex. I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
But Moira didn’t budge. “Do you know where your daughter was today, Mr. Cronlord?”
“Of course, she was at school. Where else would she be?” he asked, as if the question itself was absurd.
“I know for a fact that she wasn’t,” Moira returned, with the same quiet coldness.
Mr. Cronlord raised an eyebrow. “And how would you know that?”
“The way your wife said. Because my partner and I followed her this morning when she took Alex to the Southwestern Medical Center,” Moira said. “And we saw her drag Alex’s limp body out of the hospital in the afternoon.”
Cronlord turned a very distressed face to his wife, as if begging her to tell him it wasn’t so. But she sat there stonily, saying nothing of the kind. “It’s true, sir,” Andy spoke up, backing up his partner. Mr. Cronlord staggered backward a step, eyes shooting from Moira to Ainsling and back again, as if unsure who to believe. “What – what are you doing tailing my family?” he asked.
“Your wife raised my suspicions when I spoke to her last night,” Moira answered. “Or didn’t she tell you that, either?”
“No, she didn’t,” he answered, seeming definitely disturbed now. He turned a serious look on his wife. “There were FBI agents here yesterday?”
“There were,” Ainsling confirmed. “Just to warn us that we might be the targets of some juvenile delinquents that have been causing trouble lately. I didn’t see the need to worry you.”
Her husband nodded, taking this in. “And Alex? Did you take her to the hospital today?”
Ainsling did not respond, and her face remained impassive.
“Why?” Cronlord asked, stunned. “What was wrong with her? And why didn’t you tell me?”
“Possibly because she knew you’d look askance on weird pseudoscience experiments that make scientology look normal and reasonable?” Moira ventured. “Especially when those experiments were being performed on your own daughter?”
He silenced Moira with a hand, never taking his eyes from Ainsling. An uncomfortable silence reigned as he waited for his wife to answer.
“I took her to the hospital because she had First Instance,” Ainsling finally answered, not looking at her husband.
“Had what??” Mr. Cronlord asked, the first signs of suspicion – and perhaps anger – beginning to creep into his features.
“On Sunday night, Alex had a dream,” Ainsling told him, looking upward to meet his eyes for the first time. “I had my associates follow her to determine if it was an accurate prediction. The attack on Wednesday convinced me that it was.”
Mr. Cronlord’s face went from surprise to anger to frustration in the space of heartbeats. He literally threw up his hands. “Will SOMEBODY speak REALITY???”
“It is reality. Our daughter can see the future. She’s a Weaver. It’s what she was born to be.”
Ainsling’s husband looked taken aback, his features suggesting that he was considering for the first time that his wife might actually be telling him the truth. “What she was born to … “
“Yes,” Ainsling answered, meeting his eyes and seeming to show no shame – though for a moment, just a moment, it looked as though her eyes dropped from his, looked downward at the floor. In that moment, her expression also seemed less certain than it had at any other time since Moira had met her. If Moira had not been so coldly set against the Wells Society and anything associated with it, she might have sensed a trace of pain in Ainsling’s features. “All members of the Wells Society have a primary purpose in mind when they start their families – the creation of Weavers and Igniters.”
“So you are a part of this Wells … thing?”
Ainsling nodded. “When we join the Society, our DNA is scanned to determine if we are more suited to producing Weavers, or Igniters. Based on that determination, our eggs are then implanted with the appropriate genetic mutations we designed, and we are told to find a suitable mate – and breed.”
Mr. Cronlord now looked as if she had punched him in the gut. “So … so our whole marriage …” he stammered, starting to grasp the implications of all of this.
“I initially chose you because your high intelligence made it more likely that our child – or children – would be Weavers, yes,” Ainsling told him.
Moira listened to the cold, scientific tone in her voice. She heard the seemingly-unfeeling way in which Ainsling Cronlord was able to tear her husband’s life apart, and something inside her snapped. Her blood seemed literally to boil, and her heart felt as if it might burst with rage inside her chest. She sprung out of her chair like a caged animal released at last, drawing her weapon and moving to strike Ainsling across the face with it. She drew her hand back – and as she did, she felt her weapon abruptly plucked from her hand. She tightened her grip to resist, but wasn’t quite fast enough. Soon enough, she clenched an empty fist, and was looking around in surprised anger to see who had taken her weapon.
Mr. Cronlord held it in his right hand.
“Wha??” she stammered, unable to say more in her surprise.
“Ex-military,” he told her evenly, flatly, as if this were the most obvious thing in the world. “And don’t beat her up just yet. We still need her to tell us where Alex is.”
Ainsling reacted to her husband’s use of the word “yet” as if he’d struck her. Her eyes widened. “You’d let her –“
Mr. Cronlord regarded his wife with a look as cold as any Ainsling had ever given Moira, or anyone else. “I want my daughter back. After that, I don’t care what happens to you.” Ainsling almost managed to keep her face completely impassive as her husband said this last. When he’d finished speaking, Mr. Cronlord handed Moira her weapon back.
She took it, still grudgingly impressed by how nimbly he’d disarmed her. “So,” Moira pressed. Her grey eyes held a cold look as they fixed on Ainsling. “Where’s Alex?”
“I honestly don’t know,” Ainsling answered, and if she felt any pain at her husband telling her off, it no longer showed in her voice. It was the same calculating, authoritative tone Moira had always heard Ainsling use. “My guess would be that the Rejects took her.”
“The who?” Moira asked.
“There’s something you don’t know about the rash of arsons you warned me about last night, Agent McBain,” Ainsling told her, rising from her seat and walking over to one of the bookshelves that adorned one wall of the living room. She pulled several books off of one of the shelves, revealing a small safe beneath it. Moira’s eyes flashed briefly to Mr. Cronlord’s face as she did so, but he did not seem surprised or outraged at this further revelation of his wife’s deception. Rather, he seemed focused, coolly concentrating. On Ainsling or the safe, Moira could not tell.
She entered the correct combination on the lock, and the door clicked open. When it did, Ainsling pulled a file folder from within, and extended her arm to hand it to Moira. “They have, in each case, been accompanied by kidnappings,” she told Moira.
Moira took the file and opened it. Inside, she saw the picture of a young man, perhaps fifteen or sixteen years old, with long black hair tied back into a ponytail. Alert brown eyes looked out of a boyish face that
wore a smiling expression. “This man,” Ainsling spoke into Moira’s thoughts. “Zachary Mason. Until two years or so ago, he was on track to be a successful Igniter. He was to be paired with my Alex, assuming she made the cut.”
Moira raised a cold eyebrow. “You arrange marriages for them too?” she asked derisively.
“Not partnered sexually, you moron,” Ainsling snapped back. “Partnered in the way you and Agent Hall are partnered. To protect this area from the Xorda.”
“What were you people doing?” Andy spoke up. “Creating your own Justice League America?” Despite his incredulous words, his tone was calm, and even had a hint of teasing in it.
Ainsling did not answer, and Moira continued. “All right. So what went wrong?”
“Simple. He ran away.”
“The rat got out of the cage?” Moira asked, sounding as if this idea tickled her.
“He ran away,” Ainsling repeated. “And has spent the time since then converting other children of our membership to his cause – by kidnapping them and filling their heads with ideas about how horrible we are.”
“Those aren’t ideas,” Moira countered. “Those are called ‘facts’.”
“Are you going to snap at me, Agent McBain, or learn something?” Ainsling asked. In response, Moira fell silent, so she continued. “As I was saying, he kidnapped the children of our membership – most of whom, of course, were Rejects.”
“What’s a Reject?” Moira asked, resisting the urge to point out that she’d asked this same question only minutes ago.
“Genetics is not an exact science,” Ainsling explained. “We try to arrange things so that our breedings create the optimal conditions for producing Weavers and Igniters, but it is impossible to predict at birth whether the changes in their bodies that come with childhood and adolescence will cause deviations in the special DNA strands in our eggs. Permutations that would keep them from having the abilities we need.”
Mr. Cronlord’s face was now a pale shade of green, as if he might vomit at any moment. “Good God, Ainsling!” he exclaimed, looking as though he was ready to use Moira’s gun and cold-cock his wife himself. “This is our daughter – she’s not a chess piece! What were you going to do if she didn’t have the abilities you need?” he asked, his tone mocking her own inflections as he spoke these last words. “Throw her out in the street??”
This finally broke Ainsling’s composure, if only for a moment. Her head snapped toward her husband, and she actually screamed, “Of COURSE not!” The words reverberated through the house for a moment as all four of them sat in silence, Mrs. Cronlord’s cheeks visibly flushing crimson with her anger. And then, her regal calm reasserted itself, and she nodded to Moira. “In any event, they’re the Rejects.”
“And they end up, what? Normal? Crippled?” Moira was angrier than ever, seething at the thought that the callous disregard that her own mother had shown with Ian’s life was being replicated across the planet.
Ainsling nodded. “Some do, yes. Some live perfectly normal lives unaware that they are in any way different from those around them. Others … are less fortunate,” she admitted, and as she did, Mr. Cronlord looked like he was ready to pistol-whip the woman himself. “But for the vast majority, neither is the case. Most manifest a unique ability that is neither prescience nor pyrokinesis, but … some variant on those.”
“What do you mean, a ‘variant’?” Moira asked.
“We’ve seen would-be Weavers who ended up able to read minds, or with normal senses sharper than any dog’s, or able to make themselves entirely invisible from view. Or Igniters who were impervious to fire, or could draw all the heat in a given area to themselves … or away from themselves …”
Rage bubbled inside Moira, threatening to burst, but she forcibly squelched it. “And this Zachary Mason – which was he? Prescient or pyro-kinetic?”
“The latter,” Ainsling answered. “After stealing our children, he apparently feels that the ultimate indignity is to burn our houses down, as well. We’ve lost many good members to that.”
Moira snorted. “I’m crying inside. Really.”
“Well, you should be,” Ainsling answered. “He doesn’t care if he kills their husbands in the process – almost all of whom are just as unaware of our existence as my own husband.”
“So where’s he hiding?” Moira asked.
“I don’t know yet, but my associates and I have been working on finding their new home since your Federal Bureau chased them out of their last one,” Ainsling told her coldly. “Rest assured, I will get Alex back.”
“Do you even care about her outside of your order’s little holy war?” Moira asked.
“Do you?” came the cold reply.
Moira was taken slightly aback. “Excuse me?”
“To you, my daughter is, what? A name in your case file? Or, no, it’s more personal than that, isn’t it? She’s a pawn. A lever you can use to help settle whatever your grudge is with the Wells Society,” Ainsling told Moira coldly, her tone almost accusatory.
“That isn’t so,” Moira answered, trying to put as much conviction into the words as she could. And trying, at the same time, to convince herself that she believed them.
“Isn’t it?” Ainsling shot back, raising a skeptical eyebrow. “You didn’t raise her. You didn’t change her diapers or make her school lunches. Do you even know her full name?”
Moira swallowed. “No,” she admitted.
“And say you succeed in getting her removed from my custody, as I’m sure you’ll try to do once she’s recovered,” Ainsling continued, sitting in the chair like a queen addressing a disobedient subject. Her tone was that of the judge meting out punishment to a convicted criminal. “It won’t happen, of course, but say it does. What then? Will you keep up with her? Try to play the kindly aunt, making sure to meet her boyfriends and taking her to a movie every few weeks? Or just check to make sure that whatever family the courts put her with isn’t abusing or molesting her? Or will you forget about her entirely, and go back to the FBI and your little holy war,” Ainsling spat, eyes flashing with contempt, “against whatever imaginary demons of the past you think you’re fighting?”
Moira realized in that moment that she had not given any thought whatsoever to a relationship with Alex Cronlord beyond recovering her from her abductors. She swallowed again. “I don’t know.”
“We’re two sides of the same coin, Agent McBain, and don’t pretend we’re not,” Ainsling told Moira with cold contempt. “The difference is, I know the fight I’m involved in is worth it, and necessary. Do you?”
“Only a truly sick person would do genetic experiments on little children … “ Moira started, but there was no conviction behind the words now.
“Spare me,” Ainsling dismissed Moira’s retort with a wave of the hand. “I’m going to go contact my fellows in the Wells Society now – we actually know these children, unlike you. Perhaps we can figure out where they’ve taken my daughter. If you don’t mind, I suggest you leave my house and start trying to find her yourself. Oh, and by the way?”
Moira looked to Ainsling, trying to hide her growing discomfort and sure that she was not succeeding.
“Her name is Alexis.”
With that, Ainsling rose from the chair and strode imperiously from the room.