Chimera

Twelve The Bluff

An ancient blue pickup truck ambled up the path, slow enough that we heard it coming long before we saw it. The engine sounded like rocks in a blender, and once it was close enough, the sight of a familiar purple-smudged face sent me scrambling to my feet. Ethan and Thatcher had been playing tic-tac-toe in the dirt, scratching out their marks with twigs, and they ruined their latest tied game as they stood.

Teresa was out of the truck before it came to a complete stop. She walked toward us with measured steps, posture rigid and fingers pointed straight down in a way that betrayed her nerves only to those of us who knew her best. To everyone else, she looked confident and in control.

“Is anyone hurt?” she asked, looking right at Ethan. Her gaze flickered down to the collar, and her eyes narrowed. “What the hell is that?”

“Insurance,” Landon replied. He came around the truck with a small duffel bag in his hand—a bag that, I hoped, contained clean clothes. My current ensemble was starting to stink.

“It’s the same collar that the clones put on Andrew and Freddy,” Ethan said. He tapped at the metal ring. “And it fucking itches.”

Teresa exhaled hard through her nose. “Where’s Bethany?”

“She went into town, didn’t say why.”

“I’ll make some coffee,” Landon said. “And then we can talk.”

He walked into the shack, leaving the four of us alone.

As soon as he was gone, Teresa gave me a sharp smack on the shoulder. “That’s for scaring me to death yesterday,” she said.

“Sorry, T,” I replied.

“It’s okay. You found Ethan and that’s what’s important.” She gazed around us. “You also found Sherwood Forest.”

“So to speak.” I couldn’t help thinking of the Bogarts and their multiple generations of fishermen. “Just once I’d like a case that has clear-cut bad guys.”

Her eyebrows jumped. “Landon and Bethany aren’t the bad guys anymore?”

“It’s more complicated now.”

“Yeah. Landon filled me in on a lot of things on the drive over. I can see why you wanted me to come here and meet them.”

“I never knew places like this existed,” Ethan said. “But we should have, right?”

“I don’t know, Ethan. The only time anyone even talks about rural towns anymore is when another independent chain is swallowed up by a conglomerate. And even then, it’s just a sound bite.”

“No one champions the poor nowadays. The government wants to forget they even exist.”

“Would it make a difference if someone did champion them?” Thatcher asked. “Would anyone even listen?”

“Depends on who’s doing the talking,” Teresa said. “But good intentions don’t excuse the pile of charges against these kids, nor does it excuse assault and kidnapping.”

“The ends don’t justify the means?”

“Right.”

“Didn’t we once say that about the Changelings?” Ethan asked.

Teresa frowned.

Landon poked his head out and waved us inside. By the time we’d settled around the table with Styrofoam cups of bitter coffee, Bethany reappeared. She inserted herself between me and Thatcher, and I resisted the urge to physically move her elsewhere.

“You have my undivided attention,” Teresa said. “Now what?”

“We’re not turning ourselves in so you can toss us in jail,” Bethany said, “so if that’s what you’re thinking, forget it.”

Teresa turned her steady stare onto Bethany, who sat directly across the table from her. “It’s not even close to what I’m thinking.”

“Yeah? You gonna share with the rest of the class?”

“First of all, we can’t allow you to burglarize any more distribution centers. That’s nonnegotiable.”

Landon nodded from his place at the head of the table. “And how will our towns get food?”

“The legal way.”

Bethany snorted laughter. “Yeah, that’s working so well right now. Are you sure you’re qualified to be in charge?”

Teresa’s eyebrows twitched—a sure sign she was trying not to roll her eyes. “I have more contacts than you might think. Listen, there are only two ways this is going to go down: with us as enemies, or with us as allies. You choose.”

“Allies,” Landon said without pause.

Bethany glared at him, but said nothing for a change.

“Good,” Teresa said. “Now settle in for a second while I tell you two a story.”

She launched into a fairly detailed account of our June escapades with the hybrid-Changelings Queen and Deuce (as always, leaving out the part about the two Scott brothers currently living at HQ with us), including their stories of the Overseer. She also told them about the Los Angeles earthquake and our battle with the Recombinant clones of our relatives. Thatcher listened as raptly as the kids as he learned a lot of private details for the very first time.

“So you think the Overseer and Uncle are working together?” Landon asked, once Teresa had finished talking. “Or at least for the same people?”

“Yes, I do,” she replied. “We still don’t know for certain who’s in charge of the Recombinant projects, but so far we’ve seen hybrid-Changelings, we’ve seen clones, and we’ve seen you two. I’m willing to bet there are more young Metas like you and Bethany out there, raised like you were by a man like Uncle.”

“So what?” Bethany asked. “Seriously, so fucking what? Uncle gave us a good life. He taught us things. We were special even before we got our powers.”

“Yes, you were,” Thatcher said, breaking his silence in the conversation. “Bethany, your powers aren’t what make you special. They just make you different. The thing that makes you special is what’s in your heart.”

“Yeah? Well, my heart stopped working a long time ago, so fuck you very much.”

“Shut up, Beth,” Landon said. He said it with a forceful wariness that suggested he didn’t tell her to shut up very often, and was only doing so because he wasn’t alone.

Her glare was epic in its nastiness. “Are you seriously—”

“Yes, I am, and you should, too.”

“And why is that?”

“Because I believe them.” He glanced at Thatcher, and I saw something sad and hopeful in Landon’s eyes. Eyes that looked very much like his father’s. “Beth, I’m tired of living like this. Isolated. Moving from place to place all the time.”

I swear he wanted to say, And I’m tired of you and your drama, but I could have been imagining it.

Bethany’s face went bright red, and the air around us vibrated with kinetic energy. The hair on the back of my neck prickled. “I don’t want our life to change,” she snapped.

“I don’t think we have a choice.”

“Of course we have a choice.” She pointed across the table at Ethan’s throat. “That gives us every choice we need. We don’t have to sit here and indulge them.”

“We don’t have to, no, but I want to. I’m sorry, sis, but I want to hear what they have to say.”

You know that saying “if looks could kill”? She wisely kept her big mouth shut, though.

“What are you suggesting we do?” Landon asked Teresa.

“Here’s my proposal,” Teresa replied. “Give me time to find a legal grocery supplier to the towns you feed, as well as to get this issue in front of people who can raise holy hell about it.”

“How much time?”

“Four weeks, but it will probably be less.”

“Okay. What do we get?”

“We don’t turn you in to the Pennsylvania police or the federal authorities for all of the distribution centers you’ve hit. You’ll come back to our headquarters and lay low there.”

Landon pulled a face. “And what do you get in exchange?”

“You’ll help us find Uncle, so we can connect him to the Overseer and the other Recombinants.”

He chewed on that while staring at his hands, ignoring Bethany’s glare beating into him like a death ray. “I have one condition,” he said. “You have to promise me you won’t kill Uncle.”

Teresa’s shoulders tensed. “My intention is never to kill, Landon. Taking lives is not what we’re about. I can promise that we’ll do our best, but if he becomes violent or attacks, we will respond with force.”

“Deadly force?”

“Only if he pushes us to that point. I don’t like killing. None of us do.” A shadow passed across her face, no doubt put there by all of the lives lost these last ten months.

Bethany shoved away from the table, overturning her folding chair with a clang. She stalked to the other side of the small shack, then whirled around, her face a mask of anger. “This is bullshit, Landon. You want to give up everything to go with them? You want to turn on Uncle?”

He stood up, apparently getting his own anger on. “I don’t want to turn on him. You know me better than that.”

“Then what the fuck is all this?”

“It’s survival, Beth!”

“It’s giving up. We were fine until he”—she pointed at Thatcher—“started filling your head with his lies about giving you up to save you.”

Thatcher stayed quiet, but I saw angry retorts in the way he clenched his jaw and curled his fingers into the legs of his pants.

“You never should have sent that card,” Bethany said.

“I wanted him off that island so I could look him in the eye before I killed him,” Landon said, a little bit of embarrassment in the words. He’d obviously changed his mind on that plan.

“Well, mission not accomplished. They’ll turn on us as soon as it suits them. We don’t have to do anything they want, because we have the leverage. We’re more powerful.”

“Don’t bet on it,” Teresa said. Her voice had adopted a quiet, don’t-fuck-with-me tone. Bethany scoffed. “Honey, I don’t even have to touch you to kill you. I could boil your heart with the same amount of concentration you use to tie your shoes.”

“You won’t kill me.”

“No?”

“No. Too many people know who I went to meet today, and if we don’t show up again soon, there isn’t a place on this planet you can hide.”

“Don’t threaten me, Trance.”

“Right back at you, kid.”

“We don’t have to do this,” Bethany said to Landon, affecting a proper whine. She pulled a small black box out of her pocket—the trigger. “We have Red in a collar. They have to do what we say.”

“We’re trying to compromise here, Beth,” Landon said. “Let’s just go with them.”

She crossed her arms over her chest, practically hugging herself. “If we go, everything changes.”

“Everything has already changed. It changed the second we kidnapped Ethan and brought him here.”

Something shifted in Bethany’s expression, and she turned the full force of her anger and fear onto Ethan. “This is all your fault!”

Teresa stood up, as though she could somehow protect Ethan from a telekinetic who could easily hit both of them with a concentrated blast of pure heat. Thatcher shifted closer to me, doing the same thing, maybe without realizing it. “Calm down,” Teresa said.

“Fuck you. He got Thatcher out, didn’t he? Got him out to mess with Landon’s head like this!”

I didn’t bother pointing out that I also helped get Thatcher out of prison.

“Thatcher deserved to meet his son,” Teresa said. “Bethany, I would think very hard about this right now, before you do anything. No one has to get hurt today.”

“No one but me, right? That doesn’t seem fair.” Bethany’s eyes glistened with tears. Angry tears, scared tears, or just plain off-my-rocker tears, I didn’t know.

Teresa’s expression went cold. “Don’t push me, Bethany, because I push back.”

“You can’t push if you’re dead.”

“Neither can you. And if anyone dies today, Landon goes straight to prison.”

“You’re bluffing.” She pressed the box.

Ethan jerked, his hands flying up to grab at his collar. I was out of my chair, scrambling to get around the table to him as he hit the floor, so I missed what exactly happened above me. By the time I reached Ethan, Bethany was on the floor, too, clutching her abdomen and moaning.

Ethan was on his back, eyes wide and staring up at the ceiling, mouth open. I grabbed his face with my hands, careful to avoid the collar, and turned his head toward me. He blinked, then groaned. Teresa dropped to her knees next to us, practically vibrating with anger.

“Hey, Windy, say something to me,” I said, panic clawing at my heart.

“Ouch,” he said.

“You got more than that?”

He managed an impressive eye roll, considering he was flat on his back. “Must be what getting hit by lightning feels like.”

“Now Bethany knows what getting punched by an orb feels like,” Teresa said coldly.

“I am so sorry,” Landon said.

I glanced up. He was across the shack, kneeling next to Bethany, but he’d directed the apology to us. Thatcher stood between our little groups, either moderating or unsure where to go. Landon looked miserable, and for a moment I wanted to feel sorry for him. He was stuck between the life he’d always known and the chance for something new—not always an easy choice to make, especially when someone you loved was fighting against that very change.

“Guess she wasn’t bluffing,” Bethany said.

“No kidding,” Landon replied. “That was stupid.”

“At least now I know she’s serious.”

Ethan grunted. “Fantastic. She tests Teresa by electroshocking me.”

“Sorry about that, pal,” Teresa whispered. She squeezed his hand.

“Not your fault. I was born with a big old target on my ass.”

“Your ass deserves a rest.”

“I bet Aaron would disagree,” I said, which earned me twin glares from Teresa and Ethan. Oops. “So what’s our next step? Are we still taking the kids back to HQ?”

“More than ever.” Teresa helped Ethan sit up; he leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. In a tone barely above a whisper, she added, “We need to keep several sets of eyes on Bethany.”

You think? “Is it really safe, though?” I asked, whispering as well. “What if they’re playing us and end up spying for Uncle?”

“They’ll never be alone, not even at night. And they won’t have access to certain areas of the building or grounds. I think it’s a risk we need to take.”

“Teresa’s right,” Ethan said. “We have to find Uncle and to get more information on the Recombinants. Especially if there are other Bethanys and Landons out there.”

“Exactly,” Teresa said.

Landon helped Bethany half crawl over to her mattress, where she curled up with her back to us. He turned, his young face a mosaic of exhaustion, anger, and fear. “Bethany won’t do that again,” he said.

“How the hell do you know?” I asked.

“Because I know her, and now she knows you guys are telling the truth.”

“She needed to get blasted in the gut to know that?”

He lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. “It worked. But she has a condition, and I think I agree with it. Call it personal insurance.”

“Insurance against what?” Teresa asked.

“A double-cross.”

“What is it?”

“Ethan’s collar stays on.”

Ethan groaned and dropped his head to rest against his knees. The fact that Teresa didn’t immediately say no told me she was going to agree, even if she didn’t want to.

“I’ll agree to it as long as Bethany understands one thing very clearly,” Teresa said.

Bethany rolled over to glare at us. “What?”

“I have no intention of double-crossing either of you. We need to work together, without threats between us. So if that collar goes off again for any reason whatsoever, I’ll take it out on Landon.”

Bethany’s eyebrows arched high. Ethan raised his head to stare at Teresa. I even gave her an openmouthed gape. Teresa didn’t threaten lightly, and I’d never heard her say something like that to another person—especially after just demanding “no threats” from Bethany. She was deadly serious, too. Not that I was going to call her on the odd behavior in front of the others. I’d just piss her off even more.

The only person in the room who actually looked relieved by her threat was Landon—maybe because he knew it would keep Bethany’s behavior in line.

I hoped.

“Deal,” Landon said.

“Good, then,” Teresa said. “How long before you’re ready to leave?”

“An hour? I need to talk to the council members first.”

“What are you going to tell them?”

“I’m not sure. That we won’t be back for a while, but that their food supply isn’t going to stop.” He gave Teresa a pointed look. “Since that’s part of our deal and all.”

“It is.”

“I’ll bring your car up from the park when I come back.”

“Thank you.”

He left without a backward glance at Bethany. She turned to face the wall again.

“I brought clean clothes if anyone wants to change,” Teresa said, gesturing at the duffel on the floor near the door.

Even though the promise of a shower was only a few hours away, I didn’t relish the idea of a long drive in my mud-smeared clothes. I grabbed the duffel and went outside for privacy. I trekked far enough into the woods to feel secluded, then stripped.

I’d never been a particularly modest person until I got burned. Seeing those awful, purplish scars all over my body was like looking at a funhouse mirror image of myself and hating what I saw. The self-consciousness wasn’t as bad around some of my closest friends—hell, Ethan caught me in my underwear a month ago and I barely batted an eye—but I didn’t want anyone else to see the weakness imprinted all over my body. And I definitely didn’t want Thatcher to see it.

I slipped into a pair of clean jeans and a black T-shirt. The shirt was short-sleeved, though, and showed off the burn scars on my right arm that made the whole thing useless to my Flex powers. Powers that had always seemed pretty useless to begin with.

My dirty clothes went into the bottom of the duffel, beneath two sets of men’s clothes, in case Ethan or Thatcher felt like a costume change. Instead of going back right away, I sat on a fallen tree trunk and closed my eyes. The songs of several birds fluted through the air, each call as unique as the creature it belonged to—the rusty gate call of a grackle, the high notes of a sparrow, the four-note whistle of a chickadee.

The music was beautiful, and I allowed it to lull me for a few minutes.

Or longer, because the song was rudely interrupted by “Renee!” being shouted by Thatcher. His deep voice bounced off the trees and brush.

I stood and met him at the edge of the woods. I guess I’d spaced out a bit, because Landon was back, as was our Sport.

“I was starting to worry,” Thatcher said. “You were gone for a long time.”

“Just listening to the birds,” I said in a rare feat of honesty. “I don’t get to hear them much anymore, living in the city.”

He smiled. “We’re almost ready to go.”

“Thank God.” I was more than ready to leave this small, oppressive town behind and get back to a place that didn’t remind me of my childhood every time I turned around.

As we walked back toward the shack and the cars, I looked down the road to the platform. “Think they’ll be upset if I burn that thing down before I leave?” I asked.

Thatcher followed my gaze. “I think they will.”

“Damn.”

“Something tells me it would be therapeutic for you, though.”

“Intensely.”

“When we get back to your HQ, I’ll build you one that you can tear to pieces.”

I tried to get a look at his face, to see if he was serious or not—and I just couldn’t tell.

Teresa came out of the shack, frowning. Not good.

“What?” I asked.

“I just agreed that we’d still wear blindfolds on the trip out of town,” she said. “Landon insists on protecting the town’s location until I’ve gotten them a legal supply chain.”

“How are you supposed to do that without the location?”

She shook her head. “We’ll figure it out. And the blindfolds are only for an hour or so.”

“Joy.”

The Sport was made to comfortably seat five—two in front, three on the bench seat in back. Six of us were going. Fortunately, Bethany made it easy on us. Still ticked about the orb blast, she kept up a stream of whining that would put any spoiled ten-year-old to shame, and we finally stuffed her into the rear compartment with a blanket and pillow so she could sleep. Landon was driving, and we sort of deferred shotgun to Teresa. I ended up sandwiched between Ethan and Thatcher in the backseat, and the twisty-turny back roads leading out of town had me knocking into one or the other on a pretty regular basis.

After what felt like half a day, the route straightened out and our speed picked up. Landon said we could take off our blindfolds, and I blinked at the gray, dusky world. The clouds promised rain. We were on an interstate of some sort, and after a moment we passed a road sign that clued me right in—I-76 east, the PA turnpike, heading away from the Pittsburgh area.

“When can I call HQ and let them know we’re on our way?” Teresa asked after a few miles of silence.

“When we’re closer,” Landon replied.

We tried making casual conversation, but no one seemed to know what to talk about. I amused myself by watching the landscape as we passed rest stops, small towns, suburbs, and a lot of farmland. I’d never been in Pennsylvania before, and the countryside was actually kind of pretty. Green and hilly, devoid of the scars of the War that most cities still carried, even fifteen years later.

I glanced at the clock on the dash. After one p.m. I tried to do the math in my head and figured we had another hour or so of driving before we hit New Jersey. The Sport had just rolled past the exit for Lebanon Road when Landon handed Teresa a cell phone.

“Call now,” he said.

Teresa took the phone and plugged in a number.

And that’s when the world literally turned upside down.