Speed of Light (34 page)

Tens handed me a holster and a gun. He grabbed his knives and slid them into sheaths along his body.

Fara picked up extras like they loaded up this way every day. Checking rounds and clips. Things that up until months ago I only ever saw in movies.

Juliet packed a backpack of food, water, and clean cloths. “They might be hurt,” she said at my questioning look.

If she wanted to think anyone we found alive might be hungry for Lucky Charms, I’d let her continue to nurture that fantasy. “Sure.”

In charge of navigation, I typed in keywords and found
us the quickest route to the abandoned school on SR 52.

Once we were completely on our way, Juliet reached into her shirt and pulled out a photograph. “This was in the window of my bedroom. That’s what we were coming to tell you.”

“I’ll give it right back,” I promised as I tugged on the photo.

She clung to the photograph as if afraid to lose contact with it.

Her fingers loosened enough for me to take it from her and glance down at it. “Your parents?” I saw her mother clearly, her eyes deep and widely set. Her blond hair was left loose except for a ribbon tied at the top to keep it out of her face. She was smiling at the camera, but her gaze was turned toward her right and an overexposed blob of light that had to be a Fenestra. “You could be twins.”

Tens nodded after a quick peek. “Definitely.”

“Roshana’s not the Fenestra.” Shocked, I squinted at the picture.

“Doesn’t look like it,” Fara answered.

“That means your father is, if this is him with her,” I said to Juliet.
Maybe that’s why he hasn’t looked for Juliet? Maybe he didn’t know she’d gotten the genes? Maybe Roshana didn’t know what he was either?

I handed it back to her and chewed my lip.

Tens broke into my reverie. “Guys, we need to focus on Nelli and Bales. We’re getting close. You ready, Fara?”

“I never back down.”

Tens smiled. “Glad we’re on the same side.”

“Should be up here on the right,” I said, glancing at the laptop screen.

“That’s it.” Tens slowed as we approached. There was only enough light left to wash the world in grays and mauves and make it hard to see much detail.

Red brick with broken windowpanes, Jefferson Township School wasn’t far from the road but was a long way from being a usable, safe building. It was decomposing and decrepit, with the roof appearing to have caved into the top floor. The only vehicle parked near it was Bales’s truck.

“Once upon a time, this place was gorgeous,” I said as we drove into the old school yard. “So sad.”

The front doors were surrounded by limestone carvings, more like a fancy fireplace mantel than doors to a school. Stone-draped urns and cornucopias near stacked stone books made me think they believed in a “bounty of learning.”
What are we going to learn inside?

“There’s Bales’s truck.” Juliet pointed.

“There don’t appear to be other cars here,” I said.

“That doesn’t mean there aren’t Nocti. Could be an ambush.” Tens shut off the engine; the stillness felt unnatural. “Where is Bales? Nelli?” Tens unfolded from the driver’s side and pulled his handgun out. “Bad feeling.”

“Me too,” I agreed. The world was too silent.

“What’s our plan?” Fara asked.

“See if we can get into the basement and work our way up?”

I passed out flashlights. In a few more minutes, we’d be blind in the dark.

“Let’s call them?” Fara asked. “Listen for ringing?”

Tens nodded and hit buttons. “Bales first.”

A sappy ’80s love song started playing outside Bales’s truck.

“Ringtone?” I moved toward the grass under the truck bed. “It’s his phone.” I bent down and picked it up. “Yep, it’s his. He wouldn’t have left it, not like this.”

Tens stopped trying to hide his gun. “Dial Nelli with it.”

I listened until I got a weird busy signal, then voice mail. “Nothing on here. Anyone hear ringing around us?”
Inside the school?

Juliet and Fara shook their heads.
Crap
.

“Stay behind me, okay?” Tens demanded of me as he and Fara took the lead.

We crept around to the back of the property, where the bottom-floor windows gaped without glass. If Tens went first, he’d be vulnerable to attack, but he’d never let me go instead. He handed me the gun. “Don’t shoot me.” He smiled and I loved him for trying to take the tension down a notch.

“Promise.” I knelt near him and gripped the gun. I’d gotten better with my shooting, but not enough to win competitions.

I heard his
humph
as his feet landed on debris and the tinkle of breaking glass.

I leaned in and handed him the gun. “Can you see anything?” I asked as he swept the area with his flashlight.

“No ambush.”

Yet
.

I slithered into the window hole and he caught me. I took the gun and flashlight, and he helped Juliet unceremoniously join us. Fara was last. Her stony expression gave no hint this type of breaking and entering was unusual for her. Somehow, I felt as if she’d crawled through windows, and worse places, simply trying to survive.

We moved cautiously around the room, dodging rats’ nests and pigeon colonies.

A bark startled us. “Custos?” Tens called, lifting his light toward the sound.

She appeared in the doorway, her tail wagging, then turned, heading back into the darkness.

The hair on the back of my neck stood up. “Tens? Soul incoming.”

“Do your thing. I’m right here.”

“We’ll follow Custos,” Fara said.

“We’re right behind you,” Tens said to her.

I panicked, thinking the deceased might be Bales or Nelli, but it wasn’t. I leaned against a wall, but my legs felt strong and sure under me as I entered the window space.

A boy dragged his leg behind him, scooting toward me. “Help me, please?”

Trying to manifest my window, I dropped to the floor, hoping to see his face. “What happened?”

“I called nine-one-one. Reported a boy with a broken leg; they decided I shouldn’t have lied.” He tried to give
me a brave smile. “It doesn’t hurt too much anymore.” His neon-orange nylon jogging pants were torn and bloody at the knee. His T-shirt was hardly legible and all I saw was neon graffiti beneath the grime. “Do you know? Did they make it? Are they safe?”

“Who?”

“Argy and Roshana. Have you heard? Did they make it?”

“I—”

The summer breeze ruffled the curtains at my window, and I glanced up to see Auntie and Kirian just on the other side. Their expressions both grim and determined.

To the boy I said, “We need to get you through the window. You’ll feel better over there. I think you might have friends meeting you.”

“You come too.” He clung to my hand.

“I can’t. I need to stay here. But that’s my Auntie. She’ll help you.” Sweat dripped down my face as I staggered under his weight, helping him to his feet.

As his hand touched the window, he seemed to grow stronger and Kirian gently lifted him over and carried him. Kirian’s eyes met mine, his full of regret and pain and heartache that I couldn’t begin to unravel.

“Meridian, quickly, listen to me,” Auntie spoke. “They’re moving the children. The bodies are desecrated on both sides of the window. They must know they are loved to heal; they must forgive themselves for not being stronger. Rumi knows the words.”

“Meridian?” Tens’s voice broke through and pulled me back. “Juliet is calling. Can you walk?”

I nodded, shaking the cobwebs from my head. My body functioned as if waking quickly from a long nap, but I wasn’t dizzy or nauseous. Not even a little. Frantic barking urged us faster over rubble and years of trash accumulated by squatters.

Buried under a pile of tiles and fractured wood were Bales’s boots and overall-clad legs. The smell of fouled, soupy air overpowered my senses.

“He fell through the floor?” I asked, reminding myself to breathe.

There was a gaping hole above us.

Juliet was clawing at the debris. “Please be alive. Please be alive.”

I don’t know how he can be
.

We got down to him finally and saw the rise and fall of his chest. “He’s breathing.” Juliet checked for broken bones while Fara held Bales’s head still.

It was impossible to tell if his back or neck were broken.

I sidled over to Tens, who was continuing to shift through piles looking for any sign of Nelli. “What do you think?”

“The nasty head wound? I think he fell through the floor from upstairs.”

“Hopefully he’ll be able to tell us what happened. I got one soul. But I don’t see any glow of bones.”
And no Nelli
.

“Either they’re not Fenestra or they’re not here.”

“Auntie talked to me—” I broke off as Juliet cried out. “He’s waking up.”

“Bales, keep still. You were badly hurt.”

Custos wagged her tail and licked Bales’s face.

“Uh, dog breath,” he moaned, and tried to shift.

“Stay still, you’re hurt.” Tens lifted more rubble around him.

“I’m not hurt bad. They hit me on the head. I’m fine.” He tried to shake off Juliet’s hands, but Custos put her paw on his chest. “What the hell am I doing down here? Where’s Nelli?”

“That’s what we’re trying to figure out.”

“She called you—” He winced. “I can’t think. My head hurts.”

“We should call an ambulance,” Fara said.

“No! Where’s Nelli? We were on the main floor. Asura and a bunch of men showed up. Help me up. We need to find her.”

Custos barked.

Bales listed to the side like a sinking ship. “My God, they beat me good. We’d just gotten here. Not even long enough to look around. It was like they knew we were coming.”

“Did you tell anyone else?” Tens asked.

“No, Nelli dropped a few files off at Juliet’s with Tony. She told him. She told Tony.”

“Tony wouldn’t give you up,” Juliet insisted.

“No, no.” Bales struggled to breathe.

“Where would they take her?” I asked.

“Back to that museum?” Tens studied our surroundings as if wishing for a clue.

“Yeah, that’s our best shot.” Bales leaned over to catch his breath.

“I’ll call Timothy and see if the Woodsmen can help.”

T
ens drove Bales’s truck while I rode in the backseat making phone calls. Fara and Juliet followed us in the van. Tony and Rumi were on their way to meet us at a Woodsmen safe house along the canal, not far from where we suspected the Novelty held Nelli.

“That’s it right there.” Bales pointed over Tens’s shoulder. “That’s the Indiana Medical History Museum.”

The redbrick walls and stonework made me think of the school we just left. The museum was in good repair, with the exception of lots of construction signs and a haphazardly set up barricade plastered with
NO TRESPASSING
signs.

“What’s in there?” I asked. Visions of leeches and old instruments, pickled organs, and crazy medical devices that did more damage than healing flit around my brain.
Kinda perfect for nasty Nocti to hole up in
.

“I don’t know. I hope Nelli,” Bales answered, rubbing his head.

“Are you okay? Are you sure we can’t take you to the emergency room?”

“I’m fine. We need to move quickly. That’ll take too long.”

I wasn’t sure I believed him, but when Tens didn’t argue, I understood nothing and no one would keep Bales from trying to rescue Nelli.

The Woodsmen hustled us inside their safe house. The rooms buzzed with activity and I heard a range of accented English, from a southern United States drawl to the brogue of Scotland and everywhere in between.

The safe house was central for staging our attack.
Armed with what?

“We’ve heard human sympathizers can be controlled with conventional weapons, but defeating the Nocti requires tapping into the Light,” a young Woodsman explained to Bales.

“Light?”

“Yes, sir. Love and Light. They are the most powerful energies in the universe.”

Armed with love? Hello, Nocti, I love you so much I’d like you dead
.

Standing apart from us in the corner, Bales argued with Tens, “Of course I’m going with you.”

“It’s dangerous.”

Bales roared, “I know that. I love her. I’m not staying here waiting.”

Tens nodded as Tony and Rumi entered.

“We have eyes,” one of the Woodsmen reported from a computer monitor. They’d hacked into the state network and turned on the webcams for reconnaissance. “It’s possible we’re seeing what they see. We have to assume they have some sort of surveillance on the outside as well.”

“That’s Nelli.” I saw her strapped down to a chair. Duct tape covered her mouth. “What’s that behind her?”

“Looks like the refrigerated drawers at the pathology lab,” Tens said.

The kind dead bodies are stored in
.

“Who is that?” Tens asked, pointing.

“That’s Nelli’s boss,” Bales answered.

“Do you see Sergio? Is he in this too?”

“No, just the boss is guarding Nelli.”

“How do we do this?” Juliet asked, yanking at her cuticles. “They’ll see us coming.”

“Yes, they will,” Fara answered. “That’s not a bad thing. We do not need to sneak around; they’re the ones who hide from Light.”

“I could go alone. See if she’ll let Nelli go and keep me.” Juliet paled. “I deserve that.”

“Uh, no,” we all said in unison to Juliet.

“Timothy, you survived an attack of Nocti how?” Tens asked.

“I do not know. I wish I did. Our history speaks of working against the Nocti, against their human comrades, but we haven’t taken them on in my generation. Not like this. We simply haven’t had the numbers or a Fenestra to aid.”

“Then, we have an uggred problem. We can’t kill her. We’ve tried. We merely stertiled and wounded her,” Rumi said.

Fara gasped. “How do you not know this? You were not instructed on how to shine a Nocti?”

“You know how to kill a Nocti, without a Sangre?” I asked. We’d needed Josiah to kill Perimo and Josiah didn’t have a cell phone.
At least I don’t have his number
.

“You do too.” Fara shook her head. “You all know. We must shine Light on the Darkness. Light is love. You must push everything but love from your heart. Let the light in you chase them away.”