Reaper's Legacy: Book Two (Toxic City)(29)

Sparky and Jenna jumped and span around, eyes wide. Seeing what he was doing did nothing to lessen their shock. Lightning danced across the car's roof and bonnet, and illuminated the dank insides.

“Come on,” Fleeter said, feigning boredom. But he saw the interest even in her eyes.

Jack snapped his fingers and sparks jumped from them, fading in the air around his head. Sparky and Jenna were watching, and he smiled. They smiled back, but their uncertainty was clear.

As they walked, he tried to dip in to other abilities. Sometimes it worked, sometimes not. He heard his friends’ heartbeats from a dozen paces away, but when he tried to lure a kestrel down from above the bird ignored him. He sensed an Irregular watching them from behind a dusty window, felt the woman's sadness and fear, and he could almost taste the sickness settling upon her. But when he attempted to grasp the star that might enable him to communicate with her—to tell her, without speaking, that he promised to do what he could to help—he failed. Feedback squealed in his own mind, voice distorted and pained.

Uncertainties haunted him. Incredible powers were his, but so too was doubt, and a fear that when the time came to access these powers to save his friends, or himself, he would fail. The vast scope of potential within him was growing, but perhaps he could not move fast enough to keep up.

Jack jogged past his friends until he walked level with Fleeter.

“So where are we going?” he asked.

“To Reaper, just as you asked.”

“You're sure? You're not taking us somewhere else, like…a trap. Trick us, lock us away for a while?”

“You don't trust me?” she asked.

Jack said nothing. He wasn't sure of the answer.

Fleeter chuckled. “You'd just pick the lock anyway. Or melt it, snap it, or make it not there.”

“I don't know,” he said.

“I've never seen anyone like you,” she said, but she trailed off, moving quickly ahead.

“But you've heard about someone like me,” he said. “Nomad.”

Fleeter gave no sign that she'd heard. At the road junction she turned left, then cut a quick right through an alleyway.

“Where are we going?” Jack asked again.

“Trust me,” Fleeter said.

“I don't trust her as far as I could throw her,” Sparky said aloud, and Jenna laughed.

“I don't think you'd ever get close enough to try.”

“You two okay?” Jack asked.

“Yeah,” Jenna said.

“Dandy,” Sparky said.

Jack nodded. He felt the weight of responsibility upon him—it would be down to him to talk to Reaper, persuade him of their cause, convince him not to simply abandon them, or worse. But having his friends with him meant the world.

Changing, he needed them now more than ever.

He wondered what his mother and Emily were doing right now. He tried to imagine them safe and sound, perhaps locked in the same room in Camp H. They would support each other, and Emily would likely be lively and chirpy, singing songs and insisting that her mother sing along.

All the while, though, a different image played behind that one. The more he tried to ignore it—the metal bed, dissection equipment, gutters running with blood—the clearer it became.

He searched for a star that might show him his family, but found none.

“Damn it,” Jack said, shaking his head and fighting the tears. But the more he fought, the more insistent they became. “Damn it!”

“Jack?” Jenna said.

“We don't have much time,” he said. “Fleeter. Hey. How soon?”

She glanced back over her shoulder. “Almost there.”

“Almost where?” Sparky asked.

“Almost…” she said, trailing off, walking on.

Jack's friends comforted him, but neither asked what he had seen or sensed to bring on his tears. He wished they had. He wanted to tell them that it was nothing but a normal, very human fear for his loved ones.

Fleeter paused with her hand held up and then vanished with a clap! that echoed from surrounding buildings, leaving them abandoned and alone.

Jack started pacing, but Jenna urged him to remain calm, convincing both Jack and Sparky that the woman would be back. “Why lead us all this way just to disappear?” she asked.

“Trap?” Sparky suggested.

Jack tried to search around them, sense out danger, but his heart was too hurried. He could not concentrate. And when Fleeter appeared before them again, he slumped against Sparky and sighed with relief.

“Choppers,” she said. “Come on.”

“What did you do to them?” Jack asked.

“Slowed them down.” Fleeter grinned. “Punctures. They'll be going home tonight to see their loved ones, don't you worry, Jack.” Loaded with sarcasm the words might have been, still they came as a relief. Jack had seen far too many people die already, and he would do everything he could from now on to prevent any more.

They passed an old indoor market, grand architecture crumbled and ignored long before Doomsday, and Jack became more alert. Something about the way Fleeter moved told him that something was going to happen soon. She looked back more often, smiling uncertainly.

“Fleeter, please tell me that—” he began, but then she was gone again.