The Blood Guard (The Blood Guard series) (13 page)

Next, we checked each of the cells in the long corridor. Midway down, we found Sammy.

He was stretched out on a cot, focused on his GameZMaster IV. He flinched a little when the door opened, then relaxed when he saw it was us. “I thought you guys might be someone else,” he said, his eyes searching the hall behind us. “Izzy told me the head guy was going to punish me for helping you, but I told her she had it wrong. You figured out what was going on with them all by yourself, right? Maybe if you told her, she’d believe you.”

“You don’t have to worry about them,” Greta said.

“We’re busting you out,” I said. “Taking you to safety.”

“That’s good,” Sammy said, but he still looked anxious. He pointed at Dawkins. “Who’s he?”

“A friend,” Greta said. “His name is Jack Dawkins.”

“You’re sure he’s not one of them?” Sammy’s grin twitched, and I realized just how terrified he was.

“No way,” I assured him. “Dawkins is on our side.”

Sammy shoved his GameZMaster IV under one arm and stretched out his right hand. “In that case,” he said, dead serious, “I am very happy to meet you.”

C
H
A
PT
E
R
17
:

THE SOUL OF THE MATTER

I
n the parking lot, Dawkins neatly stabbed each of the tires of the two red SUVs. The air filled with a loud hissing. “That should slow them down a bit,” he said.

Then he came around the motor home and saw the hole Greta had carved into the back. Some of the wiring near the upper right-hand corner was still spitting out an occasional spark. “What happened here?”

“Greta was trying to get the trailer free, but we couldn’t get the hitch loose, and Izzy was chopping at us with a sword, and so Greta had to use a Tesla gun to cut of
f
—
”

“Never mind,” Dawkins said. “I just wish one of you had mentioned that the RV lacked a proper back end
before
I ruined the other means of transport here.” We all looked at the SUVs, now resting on their flattened tires. He sighed and waved us aboard. “I only hope there’s something to eat in here.”

He stowed the swords in the motor home’s closet, then slid behind the wheel and cranked the ignition. As he wrestled the vehicle down the road, Dawkins tapped the bank of small screens set in the dashboard. “Sammy, I assume one of these is a GPS mapping thingamajig?”

“That one,” Sammy said. “You type in the address, and it shows which way to go. The other three are for the rearview cameras.” Sammy pushed a switch and the screens glowed.

“Will those people be able to track us?” Greta asked.

“Doubtless,” Dawkins said. “But my hope is that we can outrun them and get to DC before they wise up to our escape.”

“We’re going to DC now?” I asked. “Not Roanoke?”

“Our plans have changed again, Ronan,” he said, shivering so hard his hands shook on the wheel. “There are events underway that we need to stop. Even if doing so means exposing some of the Blood Guard and risking retaliation.”

“DC sounds good to me,” Greta said. “I really need to see my dad.”

Dawkins cast a sidelong glance at her. “Right,” he said. “That’s a good idea.”

“And we can meet up with my mom,” I said and told them what Ms. Hand had revealed.

Suddenly, looming up ahead of us in the headlights, were the locked chain-link gates, with Greta’s motorbike still parked in front of them.

“I can go and move th
e
—
”
I started to say.

“Do you jest?” Dawkins said, stomping on the accelerator. “We are not stopping again until we reach DC.”

He swerved the motor home around the bike and straight through the gates. They burst open, the chain snapping like it wasn’t even there.

“That. Was. Awesome,” Sammy declared, whistling.

“That’s nothing,” Dawkins said, typing an address into the GPS unit. “If you really want to see awesome, make me a sandwich.”

“There was some bread and stuff back there,” I said, walking to the kitchenette. “I’ll see what I can find.”

The cupboards were filled with a random assortment of grocerie
s
—
t
wo cans of soup, a bag of coffee, a package of straws. “Straight off the showroom floor,” I remembered. Above the sink I found a jar of peanut butter and the loaf of bread. I picked a butter knife up off the floor and washed it in the sink.

“Sammy, tell me how you came to be mixed up with these people,” Dawkins said, cracking the driver’s side window an inch. A cool breeze blew down the length of the motor home and out the giant hole in the back.

I looked down the road behind us, fearing I’d see headlight
s
—
M
s. Hand and her glassy-eyed, numbered flunkies, but there was nothing. I sighed with relief and got to work making a sandwich.

“My foster parents,” Sammy said. “They’re scientists. And they belong to this big association of other scientists who are all working on a super-important project.” He got quiet. “My mom died a couple years ago, and I didn’t have anyone else. I’ve been in, like, four foster homes. This one seemed okay at first.”

“Ms. Hand talked about a scientific society,” I said. “She said they were doing ‘a great undertaking.
’
”

“We need a lot less talking and a lot more sandwich making, Ronan,” Dawkins called back. “That whole coming-back-from-an-early-grave bit? That spot of rescuing I did back there? Those heroic deeds require
a lot
of energy, and energy requires fuel.” When no one responded, he added, “And by fuel, I mean
food
.”

The dirt lane ended at a stretch of asphalt: a two-lane highway, the dashed yellow lines luminous in the glow of the headlights. I don’t think I’d ever been so happy to see something so ordinary. Without a word, Dawkins turned left and took us up to the speed limit.

I set the sandwich on a paper plate and started back to the front. But before I’d taken two steps, Dawkins said, “Not so fast. You’ve seen me eat. Turn that
entire
loaf into sandwiches, if you please.”

Greta found another knife and said, “I’ll help.”

“They seemed okay at first?” Dawkins asked Sammy.

“I’m not the first foster kid who lived with the Warners. The girl before me ran away. That’s what they told me, but I think something else happened. I found her diary behind the dresser. What kid runs away and doesn’t take her diary with her?”

“Just because she left her diary doesn’t mean they did something to her,” Greta said.

“I know that! But the stuff she wrote about was…” Sammy looked down at his hands, and I remembered that he was only eleven. “They were doing experiments, and the head guy would put on this freaky three-eyed mask to examine her. She wrote that the mask was
alive
. It moves.”

“Creepy!” Greta said, pausing with a wad of peanut butter balanced on her knife.

“The mask is some kind of creature?” I asked.

“Only when it’s on his face, I guess. After she described that, the diary just ends,” Sammy said. “Something bad happened to her, I bet, and it’s because of the head guy in the mask.”

“Did you catch this head guy’s name?” Dawkins asked. “That would help.”

“I think I heard it once, but…that was before I’d found the diary. I wasn’t really paying attention.” Sammy sighed and sank into the seat. “Mostly they just call him the Head. He’s this middle-aged guy in a business suit who looks normal and pretends to be nice, but you can tell he’s just sizing you up. He is cold, cold, cold.”

Dawkins drove silently for a moment. “Tell me, Sammy, what exactly do your foster parents do?”

“They’re particle physicists. Dr. Warne
r
—
t
hat’s my foster da
d
—
p
ublishes articles with weird titles like ‘The SubAtomic Smoke Trail of the Soul.’ My foster mom works as a scientist, too.” He swiveled his chair and stared into the dark outside the window. “I don’t really see them all that much, to be honest. They’re always in the lab.”

“My dad is the same way,” I said. “Some weekends I forget he’s even part of the family.” These past few years, Dad was always working, always traveling, and I couldn’t even tell you what he wore on any given day, because most days I didn’t see him at all. I swore to myself that was going to change after today. Once my mom and I rescued him, we’d be a family again.

“My parents aren’t like that,” Greta said. “I see my mom all the time. My dad, too.”

“Ronan, Greta, seriousl
y
—
I
am in dire need of sustenance.” Dawkins’ eyes caught mine in the rearview mirror. They were dark ringed and exhausted looking. He’d been run over by a semi, I reminded myself. “Where’s the chow?”

Greta stacked the plate high with sandwiches and came forward. “Right here.”

“Just drop those in my lap. I can take care of the rest.” Dawkins scooped up a sandwich, wadded it up with his right hand, and began stuffing it into his face. “Your foster parents?” he asked, his mouth full. “Those were the two oldsters we left tied up in the lobby of that building?”

“No, n
o
—
t
hat’s Izzy and Henry. They’re what my foster mom calls acolytes. They do odd jobs at the lab and just hang around. When the alarm came in about you guys, they volunteered. Dr. Warner called me and told me I had a role to play. He figured Greta and Ronan might not trust two strange old people, but that kids would trust a kid.”

“It’s true,” I said. “Izzy and Henry did seem a lot less obviously weird because you were there.”

“Still weird,” Greta agreed, “just not as
obviously
weird.”

“Oh, they’re the weirdest.” Sammy nodded.

“What I don’t understand is why they want you so bad, Ronan,” Greta asked.

“Ms. Hand told me she wanted to use me against my mom,” I said, “but that wasn’t all.”

Dawkins folded a sandwich into his mouth. “What else?”

“She asked me about the Eye of the Needle,” I said.

“Matthew 19:24,” Dawkins explained. “That’s the whole ‘easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God’ business.”

“Mrs. Warner said the same thing,” Sammy said, “when I asked her about what it meant. She’d written it across the top of a diagram that I found on the kitchen table.”

“And she probably wasn’t checking to see that you’ve done your Sunday-school reading.” Dawkins nibbled at a sandwich instead of swallowing it whole. “I don’t like how this is all fitting together.”

“How is it fitting together?” Greta asked.

“What was that diagram of?” Dawkins asked Sammy, ignoring Greta’s question.

“I’m not sure. It looked like a big basketball hoop.” Sammy made a circle in the air with his hands. “It even had a net and stuff.”

“Maybe it actually
was
a basketball hoop,” I said.

“Sure,” Greta said. “This head guy hires Sammy’s parent
s
—
w
ho are physicist
s
—
t
o make basketball hoops for them. Because he’s going to field a team in the NBA.”

“Put that way, it doesn’t sound so likely,” I said.

“This isn’t good,” Dawkins muttered. “This isn’t good at all.” He bolted down another sandwich, but he didn’t look happy.

“Why?” I asked. “What is it a diagram of?”

“I don’t know,” Dawkins said, “but I have my suspicions. Hearing what Sammy’s parents are working on; hearing about this eye of the needle…” He finished the last sandwich in two big bites. “The situation is far worse than any of us thought.”

“They’ve taken my dad and kidnapped us, and they almost cut off Greta’s hand,” I said. “How much worse can it be?”

“You have no idea.” Dawkins glanced over his shoulder at me, but he seemed to be looking farthe
r
—
t
hrough the hole in the motor home, across the darkness behind us, and back to the building, where Ms. Hand and her team were up to no good. “It appears they’ve solved a puzzle they’ve been struggling with for centuries and now can do what should be impossible.”

“And what is that?” I asked.

“Oh, nothing much, Evelyn Ronan Truelove,” Dawkins said. “But it appears that they’ve found a way to trap the human soul.”

C
H
A
PT
E
R
18
:

WAITING FOR THE END OF THE WORLD

S
ammy’s eyes bulged as he gaped at Dawkins and then me. “Your name is Evelyn
Truelove
?”

“It’s a pretty silly name, I know,” I said. “Just call me Ronan.”

“No one cares about your stupid name,” Greta muttered, but Sammy blinked at me like I’d grown horns.

“You okay?” I asked him.

“I think I’m just tired,” he said, covering his face and letting out a giant yawn. “Is it okay if I go to sleep?”

“Absolutely,” Dawkins said. “Though I fear the back bedroom may be a bit windy.”

Sammy stumbled past us to the dining nook, where he curled up on one of the padded benches.

Poor kid
, I thought, picturing Izzy and Henry. “I’m beat, too,” I said, sliding into the empty passenger seat.

“I’ll sleep later,” Greta said. “I want to know why these people want to trap souls.”

Dawkins sighed. “I suppose there’s no harm in telling you two everything, seeing as you’re already hip-deep in this. That scientific society Sammy’s foster parents joined? It’s a centuries-old group who are working hard to bring about the end of the world.”

“Why would anybody want to do that?” I asked.

“Because they can?” Dawkins said, shrugging. “Why does anyone do anything? They believe humanity is rotten with sin, and the only way to save the Earth is to scour it clean with a hellfire that rids the planet of everyone but themselves. Like Noah’s ark, only with fire this time.”

“So they want a do-over,” Greta said. “Except this time the survivors will be the bad guys.”

“Not in their eyes,” Dawkins said. “They believe they’re the
good
guy
s
—
t
he only ones with the courage to do the hard work required to save the world.”

I thought of Ms. Hand lecturing me. “The Bend Sinister,” I said.

Dawkins lifted an eyebrow. “That’s their name. They fancy themselves scholars and scientists, but it’s all just window dressing for run-of-the-mill evil.

“Instead of working to make the world a better place, they’re dedicated to trying to kill the thirty-six Pure. That is the whole reason the Bend Sinister exists: to murder people, and in so doing, bring about the end times.”

“What’s a Pure?” Greta asked.

But Dawkins was on a roll. He ignored her question and just kept talking. “And yet they’ve never succeeded. Why? Because…” He raised his thumb. “One: They don’t know who the thirty-six
are
. Sometimes they uncover the identity of, at best, a few, but they’ve never managed to murder more than five at once. Which can plunge the world into a whole mess of trouble, but doesn’t quite bring about the end.”

“And reason number two,” I said, thinking of my mom,
“is that the Blood Guard are there, protecting the thirty-six.”

“Exactly,” Dawkins said, leaning back in the seat. “We Guards devote ourselves to making sure the Pure one’s life is as regular and boring as can be. Ideally they live lives of unspoiled grace and then die a natural death.

“But nonetheless, the unexpected sometimes happens. The Bend uncovers a Pure’s identity, defeats the Guard, and kills the person we swore to protect. The world becomes a darker place, but only until the preordained time for that soul to be reincarnated. Eventually it returns to the world in a new vessel, a new person whose birth tips the scales back into balance.”

“But if the soul doesn’t reincarnate?” I asked, thinking about this Eye of the Needle device. “If it gets trapped?”

“That, my friend, is the crux of the problem.” Dawkins shook his fist. “Souls are
not
supposed to be something you can trap, not something you can pluck out of a body with a pair of magical tweezers. Souls return,” Dawkins said, and for the first time in our short acquaintance, his voice sounded full of heartache. “They
always
return. That’s the final safeguard.”

“Until now?” I asked.

“So it appears.” He steered the motor home into the southbound lane of a broad freeway, four lanes in each direction, light traffic on both sides. Through the windshield, the lights of a city glowed on the horizon. The clock on the dashboard said it was well past two in the morning.

“
If
the Bend can stop the souls of the Pure from reincarnating, they need only trap a soul and hold on to it. Eventually, they will have stopped enough of the Pure from coming back into the world. And then…”

“And then…?” Greta asked so softly that I could barely hear her.

“And then the world will end,” Dawkins said, tightening his hands on the steering wheel.

There was nothing to say to that, so we just looked out at the road and the darkness that seemed to swallow up the world around us. Our silence lasted long enough that I started getting antsy. I needed to hear somethin
g
—
a
nythin
g
—
e
ven if it was only my own voice.

“Hey!” I said, my voice louder than I’d intended. “I never told you about the purple monocle my Mom gave m
e
—
”

“She gave the Verity Glass to
you
?” Dawkins said, shaking his head. “Awfully trusting.”

“Maybe not so much,” I said, thinking of what my mom had written on the envelope. “I was supposed to give it to whoever I met on the train. You, I guess.”

“Please do not tell me that the Bend Sinister found it and took it from you,” Dawkins said, his eyes glancing off Greta before meeting my own.

“No,” I said, patting my jeans. “I’ve got it right here. You want it?”

“Just keep it in your pocket for now,” he said with a shake of his head.

“It was strange,” I went on. “When I used it to look at Izzy and Henry, those people from the motor home, they were just kind of shimmery outlines.”

“That’s because they’re not there in a way the Verity Glass can see. They’ve signed over their life force to further the cause. Many Bend Sinister acolytes donate their animating spark, that spiritual essence that carries a person through his or her life.

“All that sacrificed life force adds up to a mighty raw power. It’s channeled by the Hands.”

“Like Ms. Hand?” Greta asked.

Dawkins scowled. “That’s her title, not her name. A Hand can use the power herself or funnel it through her minions, that bunch of soulless brutes who tag along in her wake.”

“Back at the safe house,” I said, “when Greta trapped Mr. Four, Ms. Hand sai
d
—
”

“
‘
The flesh is all he has left,
’
” Greta said.

“Your Mr. Four barely exists now except as an extension of the so-called Ms. Hand. But through him and others like him, she can perform wondrous feats.”

“We saw some of that,” I said, and told him about Mr. Four at the river.

“But worse even than the Hands,” Dawkins continued, “are the Heads. No one knows their identities. Who are they when they’re not bent on evil? We have no idea. They pretend to be ordinary people, holding down ordinary jobs. The Blood Guard’s work would be tons simpler if the Heads would just, I don’t know, wear some kind of universally recognized sign of wickedness.”

“What about that tattoo,” I said. “The open eye with the wavy lines coming off of it. Couldn’t you look for that?”

“The symbol of the Perceptor,” Dawkins said. “An all-seeing eye before which nothing can be hidden. That girl’s diary Sammy mentioned? She’d been examined by the Perceptor. It is sort of like a Verity Glass, except it’s a sickly green and glows, and the Bend Sinister mount it in this horrifying mask.”

“You drew a picture of it!” Greta said. “In your notebook.”

Dawkins nodded. “I’ve never seen one myself, but that’s what I’m told it looks like. It allows the user to actually
perceive
souls, but it is supposed to have other abilities as well. The tattoo of the Perceptor, however, is not for anyone who must move unrecognized in the world. So a Head wouldn’t be marked.”

“Are you one of those Pures you mentioned?” Greta asked, resting her hand on Dawkins’ shoulder. “Were you reincarnated? After the truck stop?”

Dawkins laughed. “Afraid not! That was just plain old healing. An Overseer’s body repairs itself no matter what befalls it. That’s why I eat so muc
h
—
I
have a metabolism like a furnace.”

“You healed?” I asked. “An eighteen-wheeler comes to a stop on top of you and you just…get better?”

“Yes, Ronan. I heal. Very quickly, perhaps, but just like your body does when you have a cut or a broken bone. Overseers cannot be killed.
Nunquam mori
, it’s called by the Guard, which is just a fussy way of saying ‘Never die’ in Latin. I’ve hidden my death, and as a result, the world is stuck with me until I decide to shuffle off.”

“I wish I could do that,” I said, and thought of my mom. “Are all Blood Guards immortal?”

“No, only the Overseers,” Dawkins said. “And trust me, you do
not
wish it for yourself or anyone you love. It
hurts
. Though I may not be able to be killed, I still feel every almost-death.” His whole body shivered. “Nausea and pain so overwhelming that a real death would be a mercy. But then…” He caught my eye. “As you say, I get better.”

“So does this mean you’ve been alive a long time?” Greta asked.

“A couple hundred years, though I am relatively young in the ranks of the Blood Guard’s Overseers.”

“You’re two hundred years old?”

“Not quite,” Dawkins said, “but another ten years or so and…”

“That means you were born in…1824?” Greta said.

“1821, actually. It was about ten years later that I got involved with the Blood Guard, though I didn’t understand that. At first all I understood was that I’d picked the wrong pocket.”

“So you’ve been a thief all your life,” Greta said.

“Pickpocket,” he corrected her. “There’s a difference. Picking pockets takes…art. Prestidigitation. Finesse. Thieving is just smash and grab.”

“Stealing is stealing.” Greta folded her legs against her chest and wrapped her arms around them, then closed her eyes. “Where was this, again?” she asked with a yawn.

“England,” Dawkins said. “I was born the month Napoleon Bonaparte died, May of 1821. I came into the world in a dark little hole of a town called Northampton, within an even darker, smaller hole called a workhouse.

“My mum had gone there when no other place would have her: she was poor, pregnant, without a husband or a job. A few years later, she finally got out, sewn into a burlap sack and tossed in a potter’s field with a shovelful of lime, lost among all the others who’d died in the workhouses.

“Not being the trusting sort, I ran away the first chance I got, just after I turned eight. My feet carried me south to London and into the company of two similarly homeless children named Agatha and Spinks. We were scavengers and thieves and always hungry. One winter when I was ten or so, we spotted the perfect mark.…”