Outlaw Read online

  Keisha got up again, and again golf ball-sized balls of metal appeared in front of her. She flung the half-dozen balls at the three people stumbling in front of her, smacked them in the head. They yelled and then fell.

  I reached into the blackberry vines and brought them up, but this time, smoothed out the thorns and instead made the vines more like ivy, tough as nylon cable, and ensnared the writhing people, all six of them, pulling them hard against the ground.

  Keisha wiped blood from her mouth. She must have banged her lips against her teeth one of those times she fell. It certainly made her seem even more annoyed than usual when it came to dealing with idiots.

  “You didn’t have to be stupid,” she said, and kicked one of the guys. He yelled, but couldn’t move much, lashed to the ground by my vines.

  I grabbed her arm, pulled her back. My heart raced. We’d hurt them more than I’d intended. “That’s enough,” I said. My voice rasped from pushing my power. My legs trembled. My anger and Keisha’s anger could have killed them.

  Keisha glared at them but didn’t say anything else.

  I knelt down by the blonde. “Look, we know you know Ella. We know she’s been here, too. We just want to see her.”

  The blonde woman coughed. “She’s not here anymore.”

  “The fuck you say,” Keisha growled. My eyes widened. She fingered a razor-blade-like shiv that was suddenly in her hand. I hadn’t seen her conjure that, but I knew her well enough to know she’d still be itching to make them feel her anger.

  We were both always so angry, and these people frustrated us. We had to be stronger.

  I swallowed and caught Keisha’s eye. I mouthed “don’t.” She lowered her hand, but glared again at the people on the ground.

  I turned back to the blonde. She tried to raise her head, but the vines pinned her neck. I commanded them to loosen and helped her sit up.

  “Please, tell me where she is.”

  “She’s not here.” The woman closed her eyes. “I promise you I’m telling the truth. She’s not here.”

  “Okay, then where is she?” I asked.

  “I’m. . . I’m not sure. I think it’s a new place.”

  Keisha walked over, looked down at the woman with a scornful expression. “A new place? What the hell does that mean?”

  “I need to show you,” the woman answered.

  Keisha and I exchanged glances. I made the sign for crazy. Keisha snorted.

  “You got that right,” she muttered.

  Still, what did we have to lose? As it was now, Ella decided when to see us. That didn’t give me any chance to try and talk some sense into her.

  I gestured at the vines, and they withdrew, slithering back into the ground like worms. “Okay. I’ll trust you.”

  Keisha’s eyebrows shot up. Really? She mouthed at me.

  I nodded. She answered with a disgusted shake of her head. I shrugged but she ignored me.

  I helped the woman up. She winced. “Your plant power is nasty,” she said.

  Funny, no one ever called it that before.

  “You didn’t give me any choice,” I said.

  “No, I guess we didn’t.” Her eyes got this faraway look. “I really wish things could be different,” she said.

  “I don’t understand.”

  She sighed. “It’s not for me to tell you.”

  Cryptic bullshit. My chest tightened, but then I shrugged. What was the point of getting angry?

  “I’ll let the rest of your people up, if they promise to behave.” Keisha shot me a “what the hell are you doing”? look.

  The words tumbled out of my mouth before I could stop to think. I was just tired of having to fight everyone. Most of all, I was just tired.

  The woman stretched. “We’ll behave,” she said, half-smiling.

  “What’s your name?” I blurted.

  “Renee.” She didn’t give a last name, but that was no surprise.

  I released the others and they slowly stood up.

  “Where’s this place?” I asked.

  “Better if I show you,” Renee replied. “It isn’t far.”

  Keisha raised an eyebrow at me. I shrugged.

  “You sure this is a good idea, Renee?” The biggest dude asked, rubbing the side of his head from where Keisha’s steel ball had smacked him. One of the other guys was applying some sort of green lotion to the burns from the sap. He passed the little bottle around. Aloe, I guessed.

  “She deserves to know.”

  The other woman, the redhead, crossed her arms. Blood had dried on the side of her face, making her look even angrier. “You shouldn’t show her without all of us voting. You know the rules.”

  “The rules also say it’s my turn to be in charge, since this is an evacuation. There isn’t time to vote.”

  Evacuation. I wondered exactly what that meant.

  “All right,” the big guy broke in, “Renee’s got a point, Chloe.” Chloe, the redhead, turned her head away but didn’t say anything.

  “Thanks,” I said to Renee. The world suddenly seemed a little brighter, even though gray clouds still hung low overhead.

  “It’s the right thing to do,” Renee said. She turned to the others. “We need to remember the Way of Insight. ‘All are welcome on the path.’ She looked at me, and pointed a trail that ran toward the hills. “We’ll show you what we know. Fair enough?”

  I nodded. We headed up the trail.

  After fifty yards or so spent tagging along behind us, Keisha stepped close to me and hissed in my ear. “You got to know we can’t trust these jerks, Mat. So why are you?”

  My good mood vanished. I whipped my head around. “I’ll do what it takes to find Ella. Including rolling the dice with the Fellowship.”

  “Shit, really?” She rolled her eyes. “A lot of these ‘Fellowship’ types look and act like gangers.”

  I stopped and faced her, while the others continued. Me and Keisha practically bumped noses. Her sweat stink filled my nose. I probably smelled as bad to her, we’d both been a couple of days between showers, and hiking out in the boondocks, besides.

  “It’s my choice,” I said, my voice low. “You want to make something of that? Because we make choices and decisions based on our guts all the time, don’t we?”

  My face grew hot, like I stood too close to a blazing fire.

  Keisha glared back at me. Her nostrils flared. “Yeah, and we do idiot stuff all the time, too, don’t we?”

  Renee and the others stopped about ten yards up the trail from us and looked back, watching us.

  “Look, this is our chance,” I told Keisha. I nodded in the direction of the others. “You want to blow that because you don’t agree with my feeling. Okay, you don’t have to go with me. I can do this on my own. You can hang out back at our room in Portland, and wait for me.”

  “You’d get your ass handed to you by god-only-knows who if I’m not around,” she shot back.

  “Fine, then watch my ass.”

  We stared at each other for a long moment, not blinking, then she snorted. “Okay, I got your back, but I’m not watching that lame ass of yours. Besides, you aren’t my type.”

  I grinned. “And you’re not mine.” We both liked boys. Well, in theory, anyway. Other than Alex Sanchez and Winterfield. In the last few years I hadn’t been around many men who weren’t nuts. Okay, Karl Cooper, sanctioned Empowered, star of the Hero Council. Sure, he was cute, handsome in a different way from Alex, but I didn’t have time for any of this. And I hadn’t seen Keisha make eyes at any dude, not since I met her. Same problem, probably doubled.

  “Okay, watch my back.” I hugged her hard. “Thanks,” I whispered.

  We fast walked to join Renee and the others.

  Worry wormed its way up my spine. One thing about being a rogue Empowered, you get used to everything being a trap. This may have been, as well. In which case, Keisha and me would have to do what we always did when we ended up in a trap, fight our way out.

  I d
idn’t have energy to spare to be more than just worried. I’d get angry before I got scared. My Special Corrections Psych would say my anger was just my fear expressing itself. Whatever.

  The air felt like it did just before a thunderstorm, which was strange, since it’d been raining. But there was an almost electric crackle in it, and the hairs on my arm all stood up.

  5

  We walked uphill until we reached a cliff with an ancient timber-framed opening at the base, screened by a line of dogwood trees ten yards from the opening. A wooden placard was nailed beside the opening. The wood was clear of moss, with the words “MINE” scrawled on it in faded green paint. Nothing else. No keep out, no warnings. Mossville had been near where Ella had gone to outdoor school, you’d think there’d have been more signage here. Maybe the Fellowship had taken it all down.

  Renee led the others inside.

  Keisha and I paused at the entrance, looked at each other.

  “What the hell?” she said, shaking her head. “Following them into an abandoned mine? Not the smartest thing we’ve done.”

  “Pretty high on the scale of dumb,” I agreed. It was crazy, but what choice did we have if we wanted to find Ella?

  Flashlights shone inside. Keisha shrugged. “What are we waiting for?”

  I nodded. We entered the mine. I started sweating right away. The air inside was hot and humid, which was odd. We followed Renee’s party.

  She led us into the tunnel. Spiderwebs of glowing blue trails lined the tunnel’s walls.

  “What the hell is that?” Keisha whispered to me.

  “Don’t know.”

  The weird glowing blue vein-like stuff looked like a combination of lichen and hardened paint. I brushed at it with my finger tip. A strange tingling shot up my finger, through my hand, and up my arm. I yanked my hand back. The lichen-paint stuff was silent to my plant sense, so I guessed it wasn’t a plant.

  “Does it pack a charge?” Keisha asked.

  “Sorta. It’s tingling.”

  “Tingling?”

  “Yes.” I licked my lips, exhaled slowly.

  Keisha’s eyes narrowed. “You mean like being around an Empowered? But that stuff isn’t living, is it? And it sure as hell doesn’t look human.”

  I shivered. That was a creepy thought.

  Renee and the others had disappeared.

  Idiot, I told myself. I’m an idiot. Why did I think I could trust them just like that? Especially in a crazy place like this. Stupid. I took off after them, half-sprinting around the corner. “Come on!” I called to Keisha behind me.

  Old timbers shored up a fork where the mine tunnel split into two, one heading to the left, the other right. The right-hand one glowed faintly blue, while the left-hand one was pitch dark.

  I didn’t hesitate, I went right. The tunnel twisted like a snake, laced with those glowing blue veins of lichen-paint stuff. The tunnel went on for what seemed like miles, but had to be “only” hundreds of yards of twisty turns. Every so often we’d pass a little alcove carved out of the rock. Some had the blue veins, others didn’t.

  The tunnel sloped down for a long, long way. We passed through a couple of galleries, filled with more of the blue veins and moss, and down again until we must have gone at least a mile. My feet ached and my mouth felt desert dry.

  Finally, the tunnel opened up into a wide cave-like space. I spotted Renee and the others. They stood in a line, facing us, arms loose at their sides. They looked deadly serious. The cave was lit up by the blue glow with long shadows everywhere, making the faces of the waiting cultists look like twisted goblins.

  My jaw tightened. “What’s this?” Smelled like a setup. I began to ball my fists, but then something whispered in my head. Loudly.

  Moss. Moss covered the tunnel walls here, divided only by the lichen-dried paint stuff. The moss whispered wordlessly in my head. I could feel the walls, through the moss. I could sense the temperature. I could feel tingling, faint, not from the cultists, but from the rock itself, the kind of tingling you get when you are around another Empowered.

  Mossville. The room seemed to tilt all of a sudden. I swayed, nearly fell.

  “Mat!” Keisha yelled behind me. “What are you assholes doing to her?” She snarled the question at them. Her shout blasted my ears.

  The moss whispered louder. Everything was amplified in here, in this place. My power pulled my awareness into the moss, until everything was moss, green, even down here, where it shouldn’t be growing. The rocks were wet, water dribbled through cracks. The roots of the moss stretched through the rock beneath it, like coral. All of this shot through me in an instant.

  A sharp pain exploded across the side of my face. I staggered.

  Keisha pulled back her arm, ready to smack again. “Snap out of it, Mat!”

  The ground suddenly felt solid and level under my feet. My face still hurt like hell, but the whispering was faint.

  “I’m sorry,” Renee said, and she actually looked sad.

  When people apologized out of the blue, it was usually because they were about to hurt you.

  “I thought you were going to help me find my sister.” I clenched my fists. “I thought that was why you brought us here.”

  The men chuckled. “Glad you are so gullible,” one of them said. “Makes things so much easier.

  Renee gave him a pinched look. “That’s enough.” She turned back to me “She’s not here. We need you to understand that she doesn’t want to see you.” Three people appeared from the darkness behind her, an older man and two young women. They raised their arms.

  “We don’t want to hurt you,” Renee said.

  The looks on the faces of the men told a different story.

  The new trio twiddled their fingers.

  The moss’s whispers quieted, and I felt my power slipping away. There was no tingling from the trio, but somehow they were dampening my power. I strained to send my sense into the moss, to connect with it. Nothing. My breath caught in my throat. I pushed harder. Still nothing. I couldn’t fail Ella, not here, not like this.

  Keisha gestured, sweat rolling down her face. She couldn’t conjure any steel. “Shit.” She gestured faster, but like me, nothing happened.

  “This isn’t necessary,” Renee said, voice annoyingly reasonable-sounding. She reminded me of a middle school vice principle, trying to talk sense into a couple of knuckle-headed kids. “Ella isn’t here.”

  “You already told us that outside,” Keisha retorted.

  “She’s not in the United States.”

  Chloe flexed her arms, nodded at her spark pals. The three of them began gesturing. Electricity arced between their fingertips.

  “So, your plan is to bring us down here, take away our power, and knock us out?” I demanded. I couldn’t believe I’d fallen for such a simple, muscle-headed ganger trick.

  “Only if you don’t leave.”

  Renee’d been lying all along.

  Keisha reached into her boot, drew a knife. “You want to dance? I’m ready.”

  “Look at you,” the big lug laughed. “A girl with a blade.”

  “Put away that knife!” Renee said.

  Keisha glanced at me. She brandished it. “Not happening.”

  “I’m sorry then,” Renee said. She nodded at Chloe. Chloe grinned.

  “Dodge,” I yelled at Keisha.

  Foot-long sparks exploded from Chloe and her pals. I dove to the right, but the sparks still arced into me. I hit the ground, stiff as a board. Fuck.

  Keisha yelled something between clenched teeth.

  I rolled over, pushed myself up to my knees, and grabbed at the wall for balance. Blue light filled my vision, and my fingers sank into thick moss. Power bloomed in me, and suddenly my head was clear, I could hear the moss singing a deep song filled with life and energy.

  Keisha lay in a heap. “Hit the wall,” I shouted.

  I could see into the rock. I could see the potential for life waiting there. I could create plant life.
>
  I went with an old favorite, and summoned a thicket of blackberry vines from the wall.

  Chloe’s threesome shot sparks at the vines, making them thrash. Pain shot through me. My muscles cramped, and I gritted my teeth. I forced myself to keep going despite the sudden agony.

  I whipped the vines at the spark trio, lashing them across their faces. They screamed and brought up their arms.

  Force slammed into me and I went flying backwards.

  This was the fight in Mossville all over again. Two fights in less than an hour with the same idiots had to be a record.

  The big dude did the muscle flex thing that big guys who tried to intimidate you always did, pulled out a crowbar. “You got your answer, but you wouldn’t listen, would you? Guess we’ll have to thump it into you.” His buddies hefted crowbars, too.

  Clapping erupted across from me. “Thanks for the gimme.” Keisha was back on her feet, grinning coldly at them.

  The crowbars began smoking.

  “Shit!” The men dropped their metal weapons, which transformed into chains that looped around their chests, lengthening until the muscle heads were bound, arms and legs lashed together by iron chains. They toppled and banged to the ground, grunting in pain.

  I smiled out of a corner of my mouth at them, and gave a little head-shake.

  “You fucked with the wrong women,” I said.

  “Damn straight,” Keisha said. She waved her hands. Bright orange steam flashed and a half dozen swords whirled in the space between us and the cultists. I’d never seen Keisha work metal that fast before.

  Fear flashed across their faces. Chloe and her three were wrapped up in vines, while the last Fellowship idiots left pointed their guns at us.

  Like I said, idiots.

  Keisha sent the spinning swords slowly toward them. The swords spun faster until the whole mass was like a giant circular saw. Firing through that was going to be tough.

  But we didn’t need to kill them.

  The moss still pulled at me, like a kid tugging at your hand, trying to get you to follow, like Ella when she was four or five and I was eight or nine. Always wanting to show me things.

  I let out a slow breath, fighting not to get angry, and the moss exhaled with me. Oxygen, but there were traces of something else. I tugged with my power and the moss pushed more of it out. It had a weird smell, like old sweat-soaked gym socks and vinegar. I closed my eyes and urged the moss to spew the stuff at the cult members still standing.