Lesser Gods (3 page)

“Oh,” I said embarrassedly. “Sorry.”

The three of us set the table, and then Alia woke Terry by calling to her telepathically. With some concentration, Alia could send her telepathy mild distances and through walls, so there was no need to go knocking on Terry’s door. Several minutes later, Terry strode into the dining room, eyes as open as if she had been awake for hours.

“Good morning, Terry,” Cindy said pleasantly.

“Hey,” Terry replied gruffly, and quickly sat down and started to eat.

We were used to that from Terry. Her manner was always blunt and direct, but unlike her grandfather, at least she had never tried to kill me.

Terry Henderson. Where to even begin...

I first met Terry a few days after joining the Guardians and moving to New Haven. The leader of the New Haven Guardians, Mr. Travis Baker, had assigned Terry to me as my personal combat instructor because Cindy had refused to allow a live-in security guard in the penthouse. Mr. Baker insisted that I learn how to fight since I was the only psionic “destroyer,” that is, someone who possessed combat-oriented powers, living with Cindy. Though only a year and a bit older than me, Terry was an expert in military-style close quarters combat, or CQC for short, and she had experience with almost every martial art on the planet.

Though I hadn’t known it when I first met her, in retrospect, I found it not at all surprising that Terry was the granddaughter of Ralph P. Henderson, the battle-hardened solitary Guardian Knight whom I had learned to fear and hate. Terry’s parents had been killed during a battle with the Angels when Terry was still an infant, and she and her older brother had been raised by members of Ralph Henderson’s former Wolf unit. The Wolves were a special, highly trained branch of the military dedicated to hunting down psionics, and Ralph had defected from them with three others when he discovered that he himself was psionic. It was these three co-defectors who had raised Terry and taught her to fight. Ralph himself stayed clear of Terry, which suited her just fine. I couldn’t blame Terry for hating her grandfather, not only because Ralph was one of the last people I’d personally want to be around, but also because I had learned that it was Ralph himself who had killed Terry’s parents when they were turned against their team by an Angel mind controller.

Born and raised as a Guardian warrior, it was nevertheless Terry who had been secretly helping the Angels all last year in their attempt to kidnap Cindy and convert her into an Angel. Terry had good reason to help them: Her brother, Gabriel, had been captured by the Angels and was being slowly tortured to death. Handing Cindy to the Angels was the only way for Terry to get Gabriel back alive. And yet when the time came, Terry, who by then had been living with us for months, couldn’t go through with the exchange. In the end, she betrayed the Angels and helped us rescue Cindy.

Words cannot describe how grateful I was that Terry finally sided with us, but she paid a heavy price for it. During our raid on the Angel hideout where we presumed Cindy had been taken, Terry got her left arm caught under a heavy steel beam, and desperate time constraints required me to amputate it just below the elbow to get her free. I got my right ear shot off during the same raid, but that didn’t quite compare to losing a hand. Nor was that the worst of what Terry got. I neither know nor care to know exactly what the Angels did to Gabriel in retaliation for Terry’s treachery, but what little was left of him was returned in a plastic garbage bag. Terry was one of the toughest people I had ever met, but nobody is that tough. When Terry vowed her revenge, I promised that I’d stand beside her.

“Pass the salt, Half-head,” Terry said to me.

“Here you go, Five-fingers,” I replied automatically, telekinetically sliding the saltshaker across the table toward her.

One of the coolest things about Terry was that she didn’t mind cracks about her newly acquired handicap in the least. In fact, she was usually the first to joke about it. And she certainly had the right: Even with only one arm, Terry remained undefeated even against seasoned Guardian Knights. The one and only time I tried to show respect for her condition and apologized for an insensitive remark during one of my combat training sessions, Terry walloped me so hard that it took Alia half an hour to heal my bruises. Terry didn’t like it when people felt sorry for her.

“Are you going shopping today, Cindy?” asked Terry as she salted her sausages and eggs.

“I wasn’t planning to,” said Cindy. “Is there something you need?”

“Just sunscreen,” answered Terry. “I finished the last bottle yesterday. But it’s okay. If you’re not going, I’ll stop by the store on my way home today.”

“Skincare is very important,” Cindy said with a smile.

Terry didn’t care about her skin. “If I get any darker, I’m going to need to get another hand to match. Sunscreen is cheaper, and I don’t want to keep bothering Alia for something as trivial as sunburn.”

She didn’t wear it at the breakfast table, but Terry had an artificial hand made of plastic and silicone that strapped onto her left stump and matched her skin color almost perfectly. It gave her the appearance, at least from a mild distance, of having a real left hand. Terry didn’t wear it to look good, though. “This thing is a real nuisance, but being lopsided makes it too easy for potential aggressors to spot me in a crowd,” she once told me. I found her caution quite amusing since all you had to do to find Terry in a crowd was look for a tall, athletic girl with short, abnormally bright red hair. I never asked, but I’m sure this near-neon red was her natural hair color since Terry never wore makeup or worried about her looks anymore than was absolutely necessary. If Terry really wanted to blend in, she needed a hat more than a hand.

Though I wasn’t nearly as lopsided as Terry, I had my distinguishing features too, the most noticeable of them being my missing right ear and the P-47 tattoo on my left arm near my shoulder. If I was sleeveless or swimming, I hid the tattoo with a large Band-Aid, but my hair hadn’t yet grown long enough to cover my ears much. I wasn’t particularly worried about being spotted in a crowd, but I had to admit that my torn ear was quite ugly. For the present, whenever I went outside, I wore a thick sports headband that covered both ears. It made me look like an idiot, but after two years of wearing clothes that Cindy had bought for me, I was quite used to that by now.

Once Terry finished eating, she returned to her room to strap on her fake hand and reappeared with her school bag slung over her right shoulder. The Guardians didn’t have a dedicated school. Most psionics didn’t gain their powers until after they were adults, so Guardian families sent their children to school among normal people. Terry was no different in that respect. She was just finishing up her tenth-grade year.

“Only two more weeks and I’m on holiday,” said Terry. Then she gave a wry smile and added, “Permanently.”

The only real downside to living with the “Heart of New Haven” was that we presented a security risk wherever we went. Alia and I were prime targets for Angel spies and saboteurs trying to gain leverage on Cindy. We had almost been kidnapped last year, and fearing for their own children’s safety, other Guardian families forbade their kids from associating with us. That was why Alia and I were home-schooled by Cindy. My sister didn’t mind not having friends outside of the house, but I did, and it irked me that the very Guardians Cindy was helping to protect regarded us as a hazard. Cindy had reasonably pointed out that parents couldn’t be blamed for protecting their children, but reason had nothing to do with how I felt about it. That Terry was living with us had been a secret until recently, but now she was under pressure from the Guardian families to drop out of school. Terry didn’t talk about it much, but I guessed she had lost a lot of friends during the last month.

Cindy gave Terry an apologetic look. “I wish there was something I could do.”

“It’s okay, Cindy,” said Terry. “We’ve been over this before. It’s not your fault. It was my choice to live here, remember? Besides, I was getting tired of being a student anyway. I’d rather be a soldier, and I could use the time to train more.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” Cindy said quietly.

“Me too,” I said, giving Terry a wicked grin. “I can’t imagine what it’ll be like when you’re here all the time.”

Terry cuffed me on my good ear hard enough to make it ring. Then, with a quick wave goodbye, she left for school.

As Cindy and I cleared the dining table, Cindy said, “You seemed a bit quiet during breakfast, Adrian. Is something the matter?”

I shook my head. I had actually been pondering my little mission for this afternoon. I hadn’t told Cindy about it (or anybody for that matter), and I wanted to keep it that way.

“Worried about Terry?” asked Cindy.

“Something like that,” I lied.

“Have you decided what to get for her birthday?”

I raised my eyebrows. “Birthday?”

“It’s this month,” said Cindy. “Didn’t you know?”

“Honestly, I never asked her when her birthday was.”

Cindy gave me an exasperated look. “Some friend you are, Adrian!”

“Well, you know Terry...”

“I know,” said Cindy. “But I still think she’d be happy to have a party. After all, she’s going to be sweet sixteen.”

I laughed loudly at that one, and Cindy chuckled a bit too as she corrected herself, “Well, sixteen anyway.”

“I’ve no idea what to get her,” I said honestly.

Terry was an exceptionally practical person with no interest in fashion or decoration, and she already had pretty much everything she needed.

“But I’ll go look for something later today,” I added. I needed to leave the penthouse alone today, and here was a ready-made excuse.

“We’ll all go,” said Cindy. “Alia can pick out the birthday cards, and I can pick up some sunscreen for Terry.”

Oops.

“I’d rather go alone,” I said with a slight stammer. “Besides, Terry will probably buy sunscreen on her way home anyway.”

Cindy smiled. “So you
are
hiding something. Hope it’s nothing serious.”

“It’s not!” I said defensively. “I mean,
I’m
not! I’m not hiding anything.”

Cindy’s smile only broadened. “If you say so...”

Cindy said no more about it and, as was usual for a school day, tutored Alia and me during the morning and early afternoon. Alia was finishing up her third-grade studies, and though I was trailing a bit behind the home-study curriculum guide in my eight-grade stuff, I was in no serious danger of missing summer vacation this year. While Alia studied at her desk in our bedroom, I spread my text books over the dining-room table, and Cindy moved back and forth between us. If Cindy noticed that I was sloppily double-timing it through my math and history so I could finish early, she didn’t comment.

With just under thirty minutes left to 3pm, I excused myself to “go shopping.”

Returning to my room, I pulled a large Band-Aid out from the top drawer of my desk where I always kept a few. My T-shirt’s sleeve just barely hid my P-47 tattoo, but it looked a bit windy outside so I wanted to cover up my mark properly just in case.

Seeing me applying the Band-Aid, Alia said,
“Are you going out, Addy? I want to go too.”

“Not today, Alia,” I said.

“But where are you going?”

“Can’t tell you.”

“Addy!”

I should have made something up. My sister always got upset when she didn’t know where I was.

“I’m just going shopping,” I said.

“Liar.”

“I am not!”

“Then why can’t I come?!”
demanded Alia, clearly not buying it.

“You just can’t. Don’t worry. I’ll be back soon.”

“Please, Addy.”

“I said no!”

I fitted my headband over my ears and left the penthouse before Alia could argue further. I had a 3pm appointment today that I couldn’t afford to miss. Cindy kindly didn’t ask which store I was going to.

I took the elevator down to the building’s lobby and jogged out the front exit. Technically, I was never supposed to leave New Haven One without my bodyguard, Terry, but the Guardian security guards in the lobby took no notice.

My bicycle, parked in the basement, had a flat rear tire that, had I any sense, I would have had mended so that I could ride today. Instead, I half-jogged, half-walked down the street. Glancing at my watch, which I wore on my right wrist, I saw that I was going to make it with a few minutes to spare.

As I slowed to a normal walk, I realized that I had somehow acquired a bit of a knack for getting myself into messes. Perhaps I could blame this one on Alia, since she was the one who crashed the kite, but then again, I was the one teaching her how to fly it.

It all started about a week ago on a windy Thursday morning. Cindy, who would usually have been tutoring us, was called to an all-day meeting with Mr. Baker and the Council which governed New Haven. Terry had bought Alia a red and blue diamond-shaped kite a few days prior, and Alia had been pestering me to take her kite-flying ever since.

There was a large park near NH-1. It was well within Cindy’s hiding bubble over New Haven, and Alia had learned to ride a bicycle there last year. We cycled out to the park with the kite tied to my back by its string.

This being a weekday and a school day, the park was mostly empty. A senior citizen here, a young mother pushing a baby-stroller there, but that was about it, so we had little trouble finding an empty clearing out of sight from prying eyes.

The last time I had flown a kite was years ago, and my father had put it in the air for me. After some trial and error, and with some help from my telekinesis, I managed to get the kite up, and then handed the string to my sister. She tugged, and the kite promptly did a spectacular nosedive into a tall fir tree.

The string was tangled in the branches and I could tell that pulling on it would only break the kite. I didn’t want to try telekinetically removing the kite either since it was caught near the highest branch. At this distance, I couldn’t focus my power on the kite well enough to not risk damaging it.