“The controls are all weird! I can’t find the gearshift!”
Mia snapped to attention and opened her journal. She’d been so busy worrying about Amanda that she forgot the other notes she received.
“The steering column is the gearshift!” she yelled. “Press the white triggers on the wheel to—”
The rear doors suddenly flew open. Mia screamed as a bloody glove grabbed her arm.
The Motorcycle Man was out of patience. His cracked helmet had been removed, revealing his gaunt, leathery face. By official records, he was twenty-nine years old. A lifetime of shifting had done a number on his body, not to mention his mind. The six people in the van all looked like Hannah to him. He was fairly sure he was hallucinating again, but what did it matter? Rebel said they all had to die. If he killed them one by one, he’d eventually get to the bitch who broke his ribs and took his sword.
The moment he seized Mia, Amanda’s mind went white.
“NO!”
A geyser of tempic force erupted from her palm. It split evenly around Mia, converging on the Motorcycle Man in the form of a twenty-inch hand.
The tempis shoved him with enough force to knock one of the rear doors off its hinges. It crashed to the driveway. The Motorcycle Man crashed harder.
Amanda stammered in shock as she eyed her broken victim. She’d acted without a single thought and yet somehow the tempis knew who to save and who to hurt.
Zack pressed the white triggers on the steering wheel and pushed the column forward. He floored the pedal. The Salgado van peeled away, its one rear door swinging loosely on its hinge.
Nobody spoke a word as Zack navigated the long and winding path to the exit. Hannah looked out her empty door at the moving trees. Mia gazed at the shrinking building behind her. David peered ahead to the front gate. Amanda stared down at her bloody, trembling hands.
Only Theo glanced around at the others in the van, his fellow survivors. He’d lost his memories of the apocalypse they’d endured. Now he had a strong idea of what he’d missed.
“Jesus,” he said, in a croaking rasp. “Jesus Christ.”
—
Gemma Sunder screamed.
She’d been in the middle of a calm sentence, a theory as to how the breachers might have been alerted to their attack, when her head snapped back and her face contorted with sudden terror.
“We have to get out of here! We have to go right now!”
Ivy took a step back. Her niece didn’t just see the future. She lived it one minute at a time. Her nonlinear lifestyle made her a strange and difficult child, but she was rarely one to panic.
“What are you talking about, Gemma? What’s going to happen?”
“I don’t have time to explain! Just make a door and get us out!”
With a circular wave, Ivy drew a new portal in the wall. Rebel forced himself up to a standing position. His muscles still throbbed from the chaser attack. His hand screamed with stabbing agony.
“Not leaving without the others . . .” he groaned.
“There’s nothing we can do for them!” Gemma yelled.
Ivy shook her head. “No. I have to get Krista.”
“Goddamn it! Why don’t you two ever listen to me?! If we don’t get out of here in the next twenty seconds, we’re dead!”
“Gemma, what’s coming?”
“Something bad,” the girl replied. “Something really bad.”
—
Hidden among the bishop pines at the front of the property, Slim Tim Witten readied his weapon. At sixty-three, he was a clan elder, one of the last of the third generation. If his slight build and advanced age hadn’t been enough of a perceived liability, he had a talent that didn’t lend itself well to combat. But he’d begged to come along on this crucial mission, and Rebel ultimately gave in. Ivy had stashed him among the trees by the main gate. His task was to shoot any stragglers who tried to escape.
With quick concentration, he refreshed the earthly hues of his skin and beard—his lumiflage, as he called it. He blended among the foliage like a chameleon.
Now he could spot the van’s approach in the curving driveway. He saw two people behind the windshield, with hints of more in the back. Fourping hell, Rebel. Did you get any at all?
Once the vehicle reached the straight and final homestretch, Tim aimed his rifle at the wavy-haired man up front. The augurs said he was some kind of artist, and that he could be dangerously clever if given half the chance. Whatever he was, he was the driver, and so he was first. Tim lined Zack in his sights and fired.
The bullet traveled fourteen inches before disappearing into a small white portal. Tim cocked his head, flummoxed, until a cold hand grabbed his shoulder from behind. In the span of a heartbeat, he advanced in age—from gray to white to ancient to desiccated. At last Slim Tim Witten crumbled into dust, fertilizer for the shrubbery.
Standing in his place, Azral Pelletier watched his young Silvers approach. He had just arrived. He was not happy.
THIRTEEN