Of Blood and Bone (Chronicles of The One #2)(49)

She shoved up from the desk, paced. “And not because I want to shield them, but because they are kids. To relay something this important, to convince those people to move or hide or fight, we need an adult.”

“I agree with you. On everything. Chuck’s already talking to Jonah, and he thinks he has the location pretty well nailed.”

Katie stared out the window, watched one of her neighbors with a toddler, and a young dog on a leash. “Will it ever stop, I wonder? Will it ever just stop? We’re going to send people to fight for people who won’t fight for themselves.”

“I’d have to say, that’s what Will and Jonah and Maggie as the heads of our mobilization forces are going to decide.”

“Duncan and Tonia will go.” It already twisted in her belly. “I won’t be able to stop them. I could try. I could lay down the law, but I’d just be postponing the inevitable. This is the world they live in. The world I brought them into. You brought your babies into. Yours are too young yet, but—”

“They won’t be for long. Theo’s eleven, Cybil’s nine. And she’s showing stronger abilities every day. Where does it come from? I say her father’s side.”

Smiling a little, Katie turned. “She looks just like him.”

“Doesn’t she? Well, except for the wings.” Rising, Arlys walked over so she and Katie looked out at the town together. “We built something good here. We made something that matters. We can’t stop now. As long as we build, as long as we fight back, we’re winning. And you’ve got to believe, you’ve got to believe that one day the world … will only be as screwed up as it used to be.”

Rather than laugh, Katie tipped her head toward Arlys. “Duncan dreams about a girl. A woman.”

“What fourteen-year-old boy doesn’t?”

Now she laughed. “He doesn’t tell me, but he tells Tonia, and she tells Hannah, and Hannah tells me. A tall, slender woman, dark hair, gray eyes. Beautiful. Sometimes she’s bathed in light. Sometimes she’s fighting side by side with him in the dark, in the storm. Arlys, do you think it’s Lana’s daughter? Lana and Max’s? This Savior some of the Uncannys talk about—The One?”

“I think about Lana all the time.” Miss her, every day. “I think about that horrible day when Max died. When so many died. When she ran to protect her baby, to try to protect us. And I have to believe she got somewhere safe, somewhere safe and had her baby. Fred believes it absolutely, believes Lana’s daughter is the answer.”

“She’d be younger than my kids,” Katie added.

She stepped away from the window. “First things first. As soon as everybody’s back, we’ll have a meeting, and figure out the best way to save a group of pacifist Uncannys. Let’s say eight o’clock to be sure.”

Arlys nodded. “I’ll get a sitter.”





CHAPTER TEN


A dedicated and somewhat fanatical witch founded the commune simply called: Peace. He believed, with his entire being, peace answered all.

Javier Martinez, once an undocumented immigrant who’d worked the cotton fields in Texas, hauled cement in New Mexico, picked and packed cauliflower in Arizona, dedicated the life he believed God had spared to peace.

He’d woken to his abilities the day the woman he loved died of the terrible sickness the devil had cast over the world. He’d been twenty-six. Fear and grief had spewed lightning from his fingertips, and that lightning had set the little house where he’d lived with Rosa and three others—all dying—to blaze.

Only he had escaped with his fingers burning, his soul screaming. In his madness, he’d sent the lightning over the fields, into other buildings, even people.

Everything burned and burned.

But he survived.

He wandered through the desert, skin burning and blistering under the unrelenting sun. And followed, gibbering to the demons only he could see, the rise of smoke, the circling crows. For a time he starved, ribs poking through his scorched skin. For a time he glutted his hunger on the burned bodies of the rats and rabbits he struck down.

For months he stole whatever he could steal, he quenched his grief and rage in bottles. And burned more in drunken glee.

He raged at the dead when he found them.

He survived. Later he would believe with all he was that the divine had shielded him, taken pity on him, tested him. How else had he known when to hide when parties of Raiders roared by? Or when to conceal himself, to watch military convoys herd people into trucks? How many times had he heard the screams of the damned like him captured by Purity Warriors?

But they never found him. Not in a year, then two, then three. Not in all the miles he walked, through desert and forest, over highways littered with cars and bodies.

So he had a vision.

While he shivered and wet coughs racked his body on a brutal winter night in what was left of a mini-mart off I-70 outside of Topeka, Rosa came to him.

Pretty Rosa, with her soft hair and soft eyes, laid her hands on him in the dark, in the cold, and warmed him.

The relief, the sweet relief from the biting, gnawing cold brought tears to his eyes.

Through those tears, he saw her for what she was, what she had always been. An angel, a messenger of the divine with wings white and luminous.

Rise up, rise up! she told him. Cleanse yourself, body and soul. Rid yourself of the demon inside you, for only then will you serve your great purpose. Rise up, for you are the Chosen.