Chapter 1: Quake
CRASH!
It felt like the entire mountain cabin had collapsed around us. There was no time to dive for cover, no time to shield my body (or Desiree’s), no time to react at all. Maybe a plane had crashed outside or maybe a bomb had gone off because there was only one jolt that shook the very foundation of the house, and then it was over. I imagined the entire house being lifted and dropped out of the sky. I couldn’t think of a better way to describe it. And when it was over, not one of us remained standing. Desiree, Jeremy, Cias, and I were all sprawled out on the floor amongst piles of destroyed furniture and debris. A gaping hole above us revealed the second-story structure of the cabin.
“Anyone dead?”
That was Jeremy and he sounded all right, though he sounded a mile away due to the high-pitched ringing in my ears.
“Desiree?” I yelled. She had been beside me not a moment ago, and now…I had fallen on and crushed the wooden coffee table into kindling. I could feel bruises beginning to form, but nothing too serious. Large stones from the fireplace lay scattered round my head and it took a moment for me to fully realize and appreciate my luck. If one of those small boulders had landed on my head, I probably would be dead without Mr. Gordon around. I crawled out of the wreckage and was about to call Desiree’s name again when I heard her cough.
“I’m alive,” she said in between short bursts of coughing.
I carefully climbed to my feet and surveyed the several connecting rooms. A home that had been so neat, clean, and organized, now looked like a war zone. Nothing propped up remained standing. Holes in the ceiling looked like gaping demonic jaws overhead. Every window and glass door was shattered. Toothed cracks decorated the drywall, ceiling, and wood-floor entryway. As bad as the house looked, one item escaped astonishingly unscratched—Logan’s tablet, which he’d mysteriously given to me before my unfortunate stint in Alexandria Lorne’s asylum. Mr. Gordon had given the tablet back to me on the drive up here. I wiped some dust from the screen. Not a scratch on it.
Desiree was beneath the mangled dining room table. With a burst of adrenaline, I hopped over the couch and helped her lift it enough so she could roll out from underneath. Her arms had a number of cuts and scratches from shielding herself during the collapse. Blood dripped from her wounds, thickened by the drywall dust caked on her skin. Judging by her condition, I seemed miraculously unscathed.
“Can you stand?” I asked, taking her hand.
The air was thick with drywall dust, creating an eerie fog.
“I think so,” she said trying, and failing, to suppress more coughing. “Where’s Jeremy?”
“I’m right here,” Jeremy replied. He sat against an adjacent wall. A particularly large crack in the wall stretched up behind him nearly reaching the ceiling, branching out like a tree. Long stemmed glasses and fine china lay shattered around him after being hailed down from a nearby hutch—and several shards of glass and jagged china protruded from his right arm and shoulder.
“What the hell was that?” he said, glancing around the room, seemingly unaware of his injuries.
“An earthquake?” I said, which left my lips as more of a question.
“That was no earthquake like I’ve ever felt.”
“Wait, where’s that creepy-looking guy?” Desiree cried out.
I had forgotten about Cias and spun toward the door. He had entered the door only seconds before the earthquake—or crash—hit, but he wasn’t there. Plenty of debris, piled and scattered, littered the entryway, but no body could be seen.
“I don’t know,” I said with growing concern.
“Maybe he moved to another plane before something struck him,” Jeremy offered. Then he gasped. “Oh my God, I’ve been stabbed!”
Desiree knelt down beside him and tried her best to keep him calm, but couldn’t offer any actual assistance. I would help Jeremy just as soon as I could be sure Cias wasn’t going to jump out of some foggy corner and attack us. I crept toward the entry and carefully examined all of the damage and scattered household carnage—and then I saw him. His body was not in the entryway, but in the connecting living room by the crumbled fireplace where I had fallen.
Cias lay on the floor with stones from the fireplace all around him, like me—but unlike me, one or more of the fireplace boulders had landed on his head. The top of his white, hairless skull was split open, now speckled and smeared with crimson.
I dropped to one knee and placed two fingers to the side of his neck. I felt nothing.
“Did you find him?” Jeremy asked since the couches obstructed his view of Cias’s fallen body.
“Yeah,” I said. “He’s here. I don’t think he’s breathing.”
“He’s dead?” Desiree asked, scurrying over to see for herself.
“I don’t think you want to see this.” I stood up, but couldn’t pry my eyes away from the spreading red pool. I didn’t want to see it either, but I couldn’t look away. It felt like I was looking down at Kafka’s lifeless body again. But I knew Kafka wasn’t really gone. Mr. Gordon had said as much, and so had Alexandria Lorne.
I glanced over my shoulder and saw Desiree standing behind the couch, fixated on the body. She didn’t move. She looked entranced.
“Desiree, don’t,” I said, walking over and wrapping my arms around her. She laid her chin on my shoulder. I could tell she was still looking at Cias.
“Oliver, this isn’t the first time the three of us have been in the same room with a dead body.”
It was a sad truth I could not deny.
“Anyone able to help me out here?” Jeremy asked, gesturing to the shards of glass that protruded from his body. “I don’t want to touch these things and I can’t move.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, letting Desiree go and kneeling before him. “I got this. Close your eyes and don’t move.”
“What are you gonna do?”
“I’ll tell you after. Trust me. Close your eyes.”
“I hate it when people say th—”
Desiree placed a hand over Jeremy’s eyes and when she slid it down his face, his eyes were closed. His face scrunched up like he was in great pain or expecting it in the very near future.
“This may hurt,” I said, hoping it wouldn’t and focused intently on each shard protruding from my brother’s body. “But I’ll do it fast.” And as soon as I said it, all the pieces of glass and fragments of fine china ripped out of his body simultaneously with a wet pop.
Desiree gasped and stumbled backwards.
Jeremy grimaced and grunted, but did not cry out. His eyes remained shut and he took several deep breaths. “Is it over?”
“It’s over,” I said calmly, but silently amazed with my newfound ability.
Jeremy slowly opened his eyes and soon understood why Desiree had gasped when he saw what hung in midair. All of the glass and china projectiles floated, frozen in space between the three of us.
I reached for one, and when I touched it, they all fell.
Jeremy and Desiree were both wide-eyed and staring at me. I was probably wide eyed myself, not yet able to believe how easy and natural it had felt to move the objects with just a little focused attention. I had commanded and they had complied—without resistance.
What else can I do?
“I’d like to ask you how you did that, but I’m afraid of the answer,” Jeremy said.
“Did you stop the bleeding?” Desiree asked.
“I don’t know.”
The right sleeve of Jeremy’s blue shirt was now stained to a brownish purple. I helped him roll the sleeve to near his elbow to inspect a few of his injuries. There were only two cuts on his forearm, but they continued to bleed—not gushing blood—but still weeping.
“My whole arm is killing me,” Jeremy said.
“I’m sorry. I’m trying,” I said.
“You’re more than trying—you’re amazing.”
I tried to suppress a smile, but couldn’t. A compliment like that coming from Jeremy was exactly how he’d put it. Amazing.
“Don’t let it go to your head, little brother.”
“No, sir,” I said. “You’re gonna have to take your shirt off. Desiree, see if you can find some bandages or something.”
“Good thinking. We don’t want her to faint.” Even now, Jeremy still was able to produce a Cheshire cat grin.
“I can handle blood,” Desiree said.
“I wasn’t talking about blood, little lady.”
“Oh, barf.”
I tugged the bloody shirt up and over Jeremy’s head in one swift motion, and he swore at my audacity. Desiree didn’t waste any time before jumping up to find what I’d requested. When she was gone, I used the ruined shirt as a rag to soak up as much blood as possible.
Not finding any official medical supplies, Desiree returned with a pair of scissors, a roll of tape, and an assortment of rags and thin cloth. By the time I had finished wrapping Jeremy’s arm in the hodgepodge of materials, he looked like an unraveling mummy. I avoided wrapping right at the elbow so he could still easily bend his arm, though he wasn’t doing so comfortably. Desiree had also brought him one of Mr. Gordon’s dress shirts to replace his bloody rag.
“There,” I said, standing back up. “Good as new.”
“What about her?” Jeremy said, pointing at Desiree’s arms. The blood from her wounds had already mostly dried. She also looked like she’d quickly washed up while she was gone.
“I’m fine,” she said and licked her thumb to wipe up a smear of blood she’d missed. She glanced again at Cias’ still body. “I don’t think we should stay here.”
“Mr. Gordon wanted us to wait for him,” I said. “He said he’d be back shortly.”
“He also said a friend would watch over us. What if there are more friends coming?”
“What do you suggest?” I asked, posing the question to both Jeremy and Desiree.
It was Jeremy who answered immediately. “We need to get out of here. If anyone else is coming, it’s not just one person. Cias is here to keep us quiet until the cavalry arrives, and since no one knows how long Daniel will be gone for, I’m betting the cavalry isn’t far behind.”
We could have argued about our next steps, but surprisingly all decided to leave the house and hide in the woods a hundred yards away, in a spot where we thought we’d have a safe vantage point. No trees seemed to have fallen, so if we were hit with another earthquake, it seemed safer out here than inside where the roof probably wouldn’t survive another shake.
I had grabbed the tablet before retreating to the trees, tucking it in the back of my pants to keep my hands free. The head of the small stuffed animal Frolics—a token toy from my childhood that I’d confiscated from Alexandria upon my escape—peeked out of my right front pocket.
The forest was dark now that the sun had fully set, but the moon was bright enough to illuminate the driveway. We couldn’t see much around where we hid, but the house was visible, bathed in pale light. If Mr. Gordon came back, we’d see him; and if the cavalry arrived, we’d see them, too.
“We should have grabbed some jackets or something,” Desiree said. The weather had been fair this afternoon when everyone had met me by the freeway, but now that the sun had gone to sleep for the night and with us halfway up a mountain, the air had a breath of winter. Desiree’s low-cut top I’d snatched for her in Reid’s apartment didn’t seem like such a bright idea now.
I put an arm around her to calm her shivering, but it didn’t seem to make much of a difference. “I’ll run back in—get us all something warmer.” I kissed her on the cheek. “It won’t take but a minute.”
“Too late,” Jeremy said solemnly.
I heard moving gravel as a dark hover car inched down the steep driveway. The force propelling it off the ground pushed the gravel below the vehicle in all directions. When it stopped before the closed garage door, four men in black hopped out and stalked up to the front door. They easily passed through the opaque doorway and disappeared inside.
We all stared at the house, looking for any movement in the windows or shadows creeping around the perimeter of the cabin. When the sound of a snapping twig rang out behind us, I wasn’t the only one to jump. The three of us spun around. I freed my arm from Desiree, readying myself to attack, when I heard a familiar voice.
“I’m glad you’re all here,” Mr. Gordon said. And in the darkness, I saw there was someone with him.
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