Renegade (19 page)

I
rolled over. Crawled on all fours to the body that lay crumpled at my feet. I couldn't make out anything—skin or clothes—so I patted the person to the left and then to the right until I felt the head. Beneath my fingertips the skin felt like dried clay, but with a sticky coating that I was certain was blood.

“Over here.” I tried to shout, but it came out as a wheeze.

Alice was first to reach me. She crouched down and produced a flickering flame. In the weak light I saw a man's face, but I couldn't identify him. His clothes were burned. The explosion had blasted part of his face away. Swathes of skin had been scorched.

It wasn't until he smiled that I knew it was Dare. There was a time that smile had chilled me, but I wasn't frightened anymore. I couldn't even bring myself to hate the man. Whatever he'd done was in the past, unchangeable. He'd helped to save Ananias and Alice and Jerren. He was going to pay for it with his life too.

Maybe there was another reason I forgave him so quickly. I'd been afraid that the body was Ananias's. But Ananias couldn't have been so badly burned when he was on the tower with us.

Alice leaned closer. Trembling, she placed her palm gently on what was left of Dare's cheek, and regarded her father silently. He must have been in agony, but showed no sign of it.

“My whole life . . .” Alice blinked. Tears traced lines down her dirty cheeks, and she didn't wipe them away. “I always knew.
Always
 . . . that there was something else . . . something missing.”

Dare didn't move a muscle, but his smile seemed frozen now, something he needed to maintain no matter what was churning inside of him.

“You could've shown me the world,” she said.

Finally he flinched. Was it pain? Or the realization that he'd have no more part in her future than he'd had in her past?

“Ananias is over here!” Rose's voice cut through the silence. “But he's . . .” Her voice fell at the end, a tiny shift with an enormous effect. Something was wrong. Terribly wrong.

As I pushed to a stand, Dare inhaled sharply. “Griffin,” he mumbled. “Must . . . draw me.”

I didn't know what he was talking about, and I didn't care. If Ananias was in trouble, there was no time to waste.

He grasped my ankle. “Griffin must
draw
me.” His voice had the same quiet desperation as Tessa's when she'd warned us,
solution is death
. “Draw me!”

I didn't want to disrespect Dare or Alice, but these were the ramblings of a dying man. As I pulled my foot free, he cried “No,” but I didn't stop, and I didn't turn around. Ananias was nearby, and he needed my help.

“Thomas?” Rose called out to me.

I ran the last few yards and took my place beside her. Nearby, Marin was helping Griffin to join us too. I wanted to hug Griffin, to tell him how happy I was that he was alive, and to thank him for saving Rose. But one look at Ananias and I forgot everything else.

“I can't feel his heartbeat,” said Rose. She pressed a finger against his neck. “He was breathing just a moment ago. When I called to you, he was still breathing. I swear!”

Marin sank to her knees and pressed Ananias's chest, trying to restart his heart. Rose breathed for him. I just stared at my older brother, unable to make sense of what was happening.

Griffin clapped his hands to get my attention.
Who. Dead?
he asked, pointing at where Alice was crouching.

Dare
. I signed in a daze.
Not. Dead. Yet.
My hands moved slowly, as if they were unusually heavy.
He. Want. You. Draw. Him.

Griffin looked away sharply. Countless conflicting emotions played across his face. Then he stared at Ananias again, and finally at me.

That's when everything came together.

Griffin had the worn, wizened expression of someone who knew this day would come—when I'd look beyond coincidence and see what was there all along. How on the day that he'd foreseen our father's death, Griffin had drawn a portrait of Guardian Lora, and watched her die instead. How he'd foreseen Nyla's death on Sumter, only for Chief to die instead, another of Griffin's portraits tucked in his pocket.

Now Dare was begging for release. Would the exchange be made too late?

Please,
I signed.
You. Can. Save. Ananias.

Griffin shook his head.
Too. Late
.

You. Must. Try.

He began to cry.
I. Kill. Other,
he replied, reminding me that the exchange wasn't without a cost.

Griffin didn't know that Father was dead. Or that our mother hadn't reappeared. I pitied him, I really did, but I couldn't let Ananias go without a fight.

I reached across, grabbed Griffin's arm, and pulled him up. Dragged him, hobbling, to Dare.

The pirate stared at Griffin with glassy eyes. He couldn't speak anymore, and Griffin wouldn't have heard him anyway. But Dare looked peaceful. He looked
ready
.

Griffin scanned the ground. There was nothing but dirt and puddles.
How. Draw?
he asked.

I stripped off my shredded tunic and handed it to him. While he straightened it out on his lap I found a piece of broken glass on the street. It didn't even hurt as I sliced it along my forearm.

I held my arm out to Griffin as blood trickled from the wound. He didn't ask me what I was doing. He'd seen Dare too now, and from his expression I was sure he realized he wasn't stealing a life. He was stealing a man's final moments. Perhaps these were just mind games, telling ourselves whatever we needed to hear to assuage the pain and guilt. Didn't matter. Griffin dipped his finger in my blood and smeared it across my tunic.

He kept his eyes fixed on Dare the whole time. But watching Griffin, I had the feeling he wasn't looking at Dare at all. He had the distant expression of someone whose mind is wandering to something completely different. Or
someone
. I didn't need to ask if that person was Ananias.

The portrait didn't resemble Dare. It was barely recognizable as a face. But Griffin knew what he was doing, and he seemed determined to do the best job of it he could, as if it were a mark of respect for the person whose life he was ending.

“Let him see it,” said Alice.

I eased the tunic from Griffin's fingers and held it up for Dare to see. He didn't react at all, but his eyes were open, taking everything in. The portrait was probably meaningless to him, though; the artist was all that mattered. With his last breath, and after years of searching, Dare had momentarily ensnared the solution.

I'd accused Dare of being a tyrant. A killer. But his final act was to save another. He'd told me that every person has to decide what's worth dying for. This was his choice.

Even though he was gone, Alice held Dare's hand, her thumb gliding back and forth, rhythmic and calming. It was a gesture of love. Forgiveness too, most likely.

“He's breathing!” Rose's voice pulled me around. She was standing over Ananias, hand raised triumphantly. “Marin and me—we saved him.”

She obviously expected us to join her. In her mind, she'd returned our brother from the dead. How could we not celebrate this miracle with her? But Alice was still hand in hand with Dare, grieving the father she'd never known, and I didn't have the heart to leave either of them.

I didn't know what to say, so I kept my mouth shut and touched her sleeve, just so that she'd know I was there for her. Eyes fixed on her father, Alice raised her pinky finger until we were skin to skin. Friends. Cousins. Survivors.

And we weren't alone. As Alice broke contact and stood to leave, three figures emerged from a building fifty yards up the street: Jerren, Tarn, and Skya, the mother I'd been certain I would never see again.

T
arn, Jerren, and my mother looked just as injured as the rest of us. Jerren was leaning heavily on Tarn. They took small but laborious steps, heads bowed low as if they didn't have the energy to look up at us. I caught glimpses of the whites of Tarn's eyes, though, and knew that she was watching us too. From the way I was kneeling, she must have realized that someone lay dying or dead beside me, and she was about to find out that it was Dare—a man she had once loved.

My mother walked slowly behind them. She was going to be reunited with my brothers and me, but our father was gone. Thirteen years ago, she'd been taken away from him before he could say good-bye. Now she was the one left behind.

Alice and I met them halfway. She slid under Jerren's free arm and they supported each other. “I thought you were dead,” she whispered.

“We would've been,” he replied. “But Skya told us to move inside the building. There was a storage room. She sealed the door with pieces of cloth. After that, everything was just noise.”

My mother and I stood facing each other, but a few yards apart. If she'd known to take shelter in that room, had she also foreseen that our father would die? And Tessa? Was this part of some inexplicable trade: her husband's and mother's lives in return for her children's? I knew I ought to be relieved—the battle was finally over, and we were embarking on a new future, free of rats and Plague. But would things truly be different this time? How could we coexist with the non-elementals now, when we'd failed so badly in the past? When they'd been forced to huddle on a distant rooftop and watch us decimate the town?

I looked past my mother at the bodies scattered across the ground—pirates and clan folk, wounded or dead. In the distance, other clan folk descended from the roofs where they'd been sheltering. They hurried to tend to their fallen relatives. Faced with so much carnage, children wailed, while parents mourned their loved ones in desolate silence. I didn't want to look too closely at the bodies myself. They hadn't died of the Plague, or gunshot wounds. They'd been burned to death in the moment I took over everyone's elements. Without me, they'd still be alive.

Ananias and Griffin joined me, one on each side. We stood in a line, facing our mother. She stepped forward and regarded each of our faces in turn, eyes narrowed as if she were filling in thirteen years of growth and change. Raising her hand, she brushed her fingers across Griffin's cheek. He closed his eyes and savored the kind of touch he'd never known.

Ananias stepped across and hugged her then. It was stiff and unnatural, more like something he knew he ought to do than something he wanted to do. But Mother hugged him back, and pulled Griffin in tightly too.

Finally she turned her attention to me again. She tilted her head to the side and watched me with a quizzical expression. Had she forgotten what I could do? How much it would hurt her to touch me? I felt like a child, desperate to be held and angry at being overlooked. But I also didn't want her to flinch, or pull away from me suddenly. I didn't want to hear her apologize to me, to assure me that it wasn't my fault, and that it would take time for me to harness my element, just as it had for my father before me. Father's power was nothing compared to mine, after all. That's why, as Mother reached up to touch me too, I leaned away. Better to accept our limits now than to risk hurting her and driving her away.

She continued to watch me for a moment, and lowered her hand purposefully. Then she looked behind her at the clan folk. I looked too.

At least half of them were watching us. Even though they had injured friends and relatives to attend to, they studied us instead, wondering if the devastation was over, or if this was just the eye of the storm, the lure of perfect calm before we wreaked havoc again. The fifty yards of street that separated us from them was a no-man's-land.

Griffin tapped my arm and nodded in the direction of the clan folk, as if he wanted me to cross the divide with him.

Dangerous,
I signed.

He mulled over this, and signed back,
They. Need. Help.

I was still unsure, but as Nyla joined Griffin and they began the slow, awkward march along the street, I knew I had no choice. For years, Griffin's life had been as mundane as mine. Now he was the solution, and he was determined to save.

We stopped several yards from a group of three men. They stood shoulder to shoulder, flexing their fingers, anxious not to start a fight but unwilling to back down.

I kept my voice clear and straight. “Do you have Plague?”

The men hesitated. “Why do you ask?” demanded the largest of them, a tall man with a straggly beard.

“Because we can cure it.”

This announcement was greeted by muted chatter that circulated to the far reaches of the group. Meanwhile, the men confided in whispers.

“Will it hurt?” he asked.

“Not much,” Nyla answered. “But Plague sure does.”

Once again they talked. Reluctantly, they waved us over to an old man lying on the ground. He looked frail, but his Plague was no more advanced than Dennis's had been. Surely there were more hopeless cases than him?

Test,
signed Griffin, watching me.
They. Not. Trust. Us.

I fought back the urge to plead with the clan folk. Now wasn't the time for a test. Griffin's element was too precious and fragile for that. We were weak. We couldn't guarantee how many lives would be saved. Or if some might be lost by waiting.

But Griffin wasn't in the mood to argue. Kneeling, he placed his hands palm-down against the old man's chest. Nyla laced her fingers with Griffin's right hand, while I laid mine on his left. When I reached my free arm around his back, I was surprised to find Nyla's hand waiting for me. We linked, and the flow of energy between us and through Griffin became steady and uniform.

I looked past Griffin to the east. The sky was shifting color, a hint of blue-gray after a long night of black. The birds that had become eerily silent since our return to Roanoke announced their arrival. Surely the timing wasn't a coincidence. This was the beginning of a new era of reconciliation. Griffin was making sure of it.

I wished that he would hurry, though. Being in the center of Skeleton Town seemed to be making him more powerful than before, but the adrenaline that had kept me going all night was fading now. I needed to rest.

Nyla loosed hands. I figured she'd had enough, that the pain was too much for her, but she was listening as the old man spoke. Although he was still frail, the lumps on his neck had receded. He'd been healed as suddenly as Dennis and Rose. When he raised a hand and waved at a small group nearby, the clan folk's murmuring became louder.

Eyes closed, Griffin rocked back and forth. Sweat glistened on his forehead. He breathed in and out slowly, trying to conserve energy, unable to take any pride in what he'd just done.

A woman ran toward us then. She had what looked like a sandbag slung over her shoulder, but it was actually a child—a young girl, maybe five or six years old. The mother laid her daughter tenderly before us. “Please,” she begged. “Please save her.”

Just as I'd feared: There were far sicker people here than the old man we'd just helped. And this girl was one of them.

“Is she . . .”
Alive,
I was going to say, but I couldn't ask the woman that. So I put my ear to the girl's mouth and felt her shallow breaths warm me.

“Can you do it?” the woman asked. “Can you save her?”

We were so tired, and I didn't want to risk Griffin's health. Even if we helped the girl, who was to say that she'd survive? I was about to explain all this when Griffin leaned forward and placed his palms on the girl. With or without me, he was going to try.

Reluctantly, Nyla and I linked hands. Joined with Griffin again, we combined. This time progress was slower. The girl was in a bad way, and we had so little left to give. I tried to stay upright, but as my vision grew fuzzy, I lost balance, broke contact, and fell away from him.

I got back up—I couldn't let Nyla and Griffin do this alone—but quickly fell back down again. In the distance I saw Kieran's father holding him close, just as my father had once held me. It was as if the world were being turned upside down, so I closed my eyes. I just needed a moment to recover.

My eyes snapped open as someone jostled against me. The small girl was gone—cured, I guessed—and in her place were at least twenty people: men and women and children. They clamored for attention, and ignored each other's pleas. Griffin had presented them with an easy and immediate cure for Plague. No one was willing to be patient.

Beside me, Griffin was shaking his head. Curing the girl must have made him woozy, because he lost balance and fell backward. A strange sound was coming from his mouth, and I just had time to turn his head to the side as he vomited onto the street.

“Enough,” I tried to say, but the word was drowned out by the clan folks' appeals. “Please,” I said, but it was pointless. They surged forward.

A man grabbed Griffin's arm. He had dark, sunken eyes, and blood-red welts around his neck. “Help me,” he moaned.

Griffin was crying. He wanted to cure them all, but he couldn't even keep his eyes open.

“I said, ‘help me!'” the man yelled. He shook Griffin.

I lunged forward and took the man's wrist. Full of panic, I got in a single powerful shock before we fell away from each other. The man crashed into his neighbors, I fell back, and Griffin was unconscious. He'd suffered too.

I held my breath. If the clan folk were ever going to attack, now was the moment. We were too weak to defend ourselves. But none of them were looking at us. Instead, they edged back as the other elementals took up positions behind us.

Marin stepped into the no-man's-land. The woman who had once treated my brother and me like we were barely human was now our protector. And Skya was with her.

“Our elements have limits,” my mother shouted. “If you don't let these children rest, they won't be able to cure any of you. For your own sakes, give them space.”

I waited for the clan folk to respond. There was muttering, but no consensus.

Before I passed out, I saw the sun peeking over the battered shells of Skeleton Town. It was a new dawn, but I'd seen that sun before. I'd seen it as I'd stood on the beach at Hatteras, dreaming of a time when I might be useful to the colony. I'd seen it on Sumter when I'd woken beside Rose, sure at last that we'd found a place that was safe. How often had that sun reeled me in with its promise of hope and change? And I'd believed it every time.

But I'd been missing the point. My future wasn't about one day, and it certainly didn't rest on something as reliable as the sunrise. Every day that I lived, my future was about me and my element. There was nothing more unpredictable in the world.