The Marked (23 page)

Cam pulled me back against him. “Now if that isn’t a good omen, I don’t know what is.”

He bent to kiss me again, but I pushed him back and assumed a serious expression. “Wait. I have one final thing I need to tell you.”

He poked me in the ribs. “Okay,” he said, “but it better be quick.”

I closed my eyes. After a dramatic pause I said, “I hate your music. It gives me a headache.”

There was silence for a moment, and then Cam burst out laughing. “That’s it? Sheesh, for a moment there you had me worried. I figured that out a couple of weeks ago. The last CD I gave you didn’t burn right. When you didn’t notice it only had two tracks on it, I figured you probably weren’t loving the music.”

“I was busted and I never knew it?” I smiled.

Cam tickled the side of my waist with his fingers. “Yeah. You’re busted. And now you have some making up to do.”

We stayed on the deck together until the ferry came within sight of the landing and they called us to get back on our buses. We shared a secret look and squeezed hands, and then Cam rejoined Trevor on his bus, and I walked down the aisle of mine to sit with Hennie and Esther.

Hennie, of course, figured it out immediately. “You’re back together!” she squealed.

“Shhh,”
I said, putting my finger to my lips. “You don’t have to announce it to everyone on the bus.”

Catherine spun around in her seat. “Did you say Dancia and Cam got back together?” she asked Hennie.

I blushed. Hennie answered before I could stop her. “Of course. It was only a matter of time, you know.”

Esther yanked me down onto the seat next to her. “Tell us,” she commanded.

I was saved from responding by Mrs. Callias, who stood up at the front of the bus and began talking about logistics. Once we arrived at Odlin County Park, most of us would set up our tents, while a small group would go to meet the guys bringing us our kayaks. Mrs. Callias assigned several of the campsite groups to help make dinner; others were put on cleanup duty.

As soon as Mrs. Callias was finished, three pairs of eyes were trained expectantly on me. I shrugged. “We made up. What can I say?”

“Spare us the pretend nonchalance,” Catherine drawled. “Let’s hear the details. Did he apologize first, or did you?”

“It was mutual,” I said.

“It’s never perfectly mutual,” Catherine said. “I bet it was Cam.”

Hennie nodded. “She’s right. He couldn’t stand being away from you.”

“Look, all I care about is that we’re back together,” I said.

“So…I guess that means no more Girl Time?” Esther asked mournfully.

“No, I’m still committed to Girl Time,” I said.

“Don’t be silly,” Hennie said. “You’ll want to spend time with Cam over the next four days.”

“Okay,” I admitted, “I will. But maybe we can do shifts? A little of both?”

Esther relaxed in her seat. “Whatever,” she said. “Girl Time’s overrated, anyway.”

“No, it’s not,” Hennie said. “But it’s okay, Dancia. You can spend time with all of us, even Cam.”

“Just don’t forget who your best friends are,” Esther said, wagging a finger at me.

I grabbed both of their hands and giggled. “As if I could ever forget.”

I DISCOVERED
the next morning that Cam was right—the water was cold. Very, very cold. I dipped my toes, half thinking I would go for a swim, but I changed my mind when they immediately turned red and tingly. I could say I’d waded in the Pacific. Surely that was good enough.

After breakfast we had a navigation and safety lesson. I found it all enormously confusing. The charts of the islands showed lots of different currents, and you had to plan your trip just right to ensure that you didn’t end up stuck in a channel with a rip that would throw you against the rocks—or find yourself paddling against the tide in an exposed area.

Catherine loved it. It probably had something to do with her talent. She had the maps memorized in a matter of minutes and sat down with some of the juniors to plan the next day’s trip to Jones Island.

They took us out for a paddle in the afternoon, and I instantly fell in love with kayaking. The movement was soothing and rhythmic, and the kayak slid through the water so gracefully I felt like I was flying. We didn’t see any orcas, but we did come across a couple of harbor seals, who nodded their heads in greeting.

We had a campfire that evening, and though I longed to huddle close to Cam, I sat between Esther and Hennie while we sang stupid songs and were scared senseless by a couple of guys telling ghost stories. After that, Cam and I walked down the beach until we found a spot between some rocks where we could sit in relative privacy. We talked and laughed, watching the water lap up against the gray sand and the sun dip behind the islands off in the distance.

They blew a whistle at nine to signal that it was time for everyone to get into their tents. Reluctantly, we walked back to camp.

We packed everything up the next morning and kayaked over to Jones Island. They had planned on having us stay at Odlin for a second night, but the reservation had gotten mixed up and we wound up needing to move a day earlier. Mrs. Callias wandered around all morning muttering about incompetent people and how she’d have to change all of her plans because
someone
didn’t do her job. We all found this enormously amusing.

Jones was small and uninhabited, with a network of trails that ran from our group site on the south side to a secluded harbor for larger boats on the north. Our campsite was up a steep bluff overlooking the water. We pulled our kayaks high above the waterline and hauled all our food up the hill so the marauding raccoons wouldn’t get it. Mr. Judan had also rented a speedboat, which was moored to a buoy in the harbor in front of our camp. The boat was supposedly for emergencies, though I was pretty sure Mr. Judan rented it so he could stand on the deck and look dapper, rather than having to squeeze into a kayak.

In the afternoon, I took a hike with Catherine, Hennie, and Esther, and looked at the handful of boats moored in the harbor on the south end. There were a few good-size sailboats, but Catherine said they were nothing compared to her dad’s forty-five-footer. Unfortunately, he’d never taken her out in it; she’d just seen it in pictures.

I lay awake for an hour that night after everyone had gone to sleep. Cam and I had talked about my sneaking into his tent after lights-out, but I don’t think either of us had been all that serious. Coed tenting had been specifically mentioned on the list of infractions that would get you sent home from the trip, and I had no desire to arouse Grandma’s wrath.

Still, I couldn’t resist what might have been my only opportunity to fall asleep in Cam’s arms. I set my watch alarm for four thirty, so I could sneak back into my own tent before anyone woke up, then rolled my sleeping bag under my arm and tiptoed through the wet grass to his tent site. Cam had brought his own one-person backpacking tent, which he’d tucked under a tree at the far end of the camping area.

He was in his sleeping bag, breathing slowly and evenly, when I unzipped the door flap. Gray moonlight was alternately covered and revealed by fast-moving clouds, but I could see his face, relaxed and open, as beautiful as a picture. I cringed at the sound the zipper made, but no one seemed to hear, and I squeezed through as soon as the opening was wide enough.

Cam opened his eyes and blinked, and his lips curved into a slow smile as I lowered myself to the ground. “I can’t believe you did it,” he whispered.

I wasn’t crazy enough to crawl into his sleeping bag—not only would I have been expelled if we’d been caught, but Grandma would have killed me if she’d ever found out.

Instead, I climbed into my own bag and spooned against him. “Remember, we’re just sleeping,” I said primly.

He laughed and pulled me closer. I rested my head on the side of his arm and sighed happily. Nothing had ever felt so right.

EVEN THOUGH
I had set the alarm, I slept fitfully, waking every half hour or so to glance at the time and make sure I wasn’t about to be hauled out of the tent by my ear. It was just after four when I saw the tip of the knife sliding through the thin nylon sidewall of the tent.

I froze as I watched the silver blade rend the delicate fabric. Then, as the knife headed for the bottom of the tent, my brain and body sprang into action. With a gentle tug on the forces surrounding it, I took control of the knife, holding it in perfect stasis long enough to elbow Cam awake.

He blinked sleepily and opened his mouth in a huge yawn, then started to roll back over onto his side. Frantic, I kicked him and gestured toward the tent wall. He looked from my wild eyes to the spot at which I was pointing, and his face grew deadly serious. We pushed our way out of our sleeping bags just as a pair of hands pulled apart the tent and a familiar face peered inside.

I almost wished it had been Jack. At least then I’d have had some hope that the guy on the other side of that knife didn’t want to slit my throat. But it was Thaddeus, the round-faced leader who had nearly beaten Cam to a pulp at Anna’s Valentine’s Day party.

He was wearing the same bandanna and the same contemptuous look. He moved to one side to reveal a small crowd outside the tent. Then his massive arms reached in, and I reacted the only way I knew how—by jerking him back with all the force I had. He flew out of the tent and disappeared into the darkness. Unfortunately, as I’d discovered when we were playing paintball, I couldn’t control an object I couldn’t see. He might have broken his neck falling through the trees, or landed unscathed. I had no way of knowing.

I had very little time to worry about it, though, because there were four of them waiting right behind him. I focused on the one closest to me. It was the girl who’d been spinning around like a crazed marionette at Anna’s house. I squinted, ready to send her into space, but at the same moment, a different girl came flying at me, tackling me against the soft down of my sleeping bag.

It wasn’t much of a fight. Despite my best intentions, I had never progressed much in my hand-to-hand fighting skills. Within seconds, the other girl had my face pressed into the ground and my body pinned between her legs. It was the ballerina, I realized. I’d have recognized her sharp elbows anywhere.

Cam and I had one advantage—the tent opening was narrow enough that only one of them could come at us at a time. So, before anyone else could enter the fight, Cam threw himself at the ballerina and they somersaulted over my head, spilling out of the tent. That was when I realized that there was an uncanny heaviness in the air, as if the noise around us had been flattened and suppressed. I tried to scream, but nothing came out. I felt the air moving through my mouth and lungs, but it was as if my voice had been swallowed before it could emerge.

I scrambled outside the tent, my neck aching from the angle at which I’d been pinned. It was strange to move and not hear anything: no rustling of the sleeping bag, no sound at all as we emerged from the tent. Even my breathing had been silenced.

Only the glow of the stars illuminated our remaining attackers. There might have been more hiding in the trees, but I could still see only four of them—the ballerina, the spinner, the acrobat who had broken Geneva’s arm, and another guy I didn’t recognize. Perhaps it was his talent that was keeping everything around us silent.

While Cam’s attention was on the ballerina, the other three rushed toward me. I didn’t flinch. Using every technique I had learned in the last few months, I pushed back against all of them. I imagined the earth sucking them down as if they weighed a thousand pounds, and they fell like dominoes, each one hard against the next.

I wanted to help Cam, but I had never tried to use my talent against someone who was so closely intertwined with another person. They kept embracing and separating, as if in a strange dance that alternately had one in the lead, then the other. The ballerina’s elbows were flying, but she couldn’t land a direct hit. Cam was too fast. But Cam hadn’t managed to do any serious damage, either. I suppose it was a measure of his skill that he was even holding his own.

I kept up the pressure on the three I had knocked down. I thought I might have injured them when they fell, but I didn’t want to take any chances. Yet I also couldn’t ignore Cam. I wanted to believe he would prevail, but as far as I could tell, his opponent’s talent had to do with fighting like hell but making it look graceful and beautiful. At Anna’s house, she had broken Kari’s ribs without sustaining any visible damage herself. Now I almost had the impression that she was holding back, waiting for the right moment to unload all her power on Cam.

I squared my shoulders and prepared for my next attack. I cleared my mind of every distraction, holding the three others tied to the ground as I concentrated on the ballerina. Perhaps if I was careful and pulled on her head or arm, that would distract her long enough for Cam to strike.

It seemed like a good plan, but before I could execute it, my body was thrown down hard, the wind knocked out of me. It was Thaddeus, his round cheeks and baby face twisted in a look of grim pleasure. Somehow, he had returned from wherever I had sent him.

And he’d brought friends.

Five more figures hulked in the dusk behind us. Hot fear made it impossible for me to catch my breath. I lost control of the threads with which I’d been holding the three bodies tied down.

It’s all mental.
…I could hear Mr. Fritz’s voice. But what could I do against ten of them? I had learned to control my power, could even manipulate two or three objects at once, but I hadn’t been prepared for this.

The first group of them ran at Cam, subduing him with their combined attack, though I think he did some damage in return. I struck at the outer circle of Irin, sending objects and bodies soaring. But there were too many for me to direct all of them, and they turned haphazardly, first rising, then falling abruptly to the ground. The silence around us broke, and it occurred to me that I must have gotten the one with the talent for quiet. But out of nowhere, a foot connected with my stomach, and pain ricocheted through me.

Across from me, I saw Cam’s face explode in fury. He struggled to get to me, knocking two bodies out of the way. Suddenly a hand tangled in my hair. Cam froze as Thaddeus yanked me to my feet.

“I suppose you don’t want to see her hurt?” My captor spoke softly, with obvious pleasure.

Three more people descended on Cam. One of them twisted his arms behind his back. But this time he didn’t fight. He just stood there, chest heaving.

“Let her go,” he snarled.

“No. I think I’d like to keep her.”

Cam’s body jerked hard at the arms holding him in place. It was clear we’d both be in enormous trouble if I didn’t do something fast. If I’d used my power on Thaddeus or his guards, we’d both have ended up getting seriously hurt, so as soon as I could clear my mind I did something new—something that had always terrified me. I propelled myself up into the air.

I must have startled Thaddeus as much as I’d startled myself, because he loosened his grip on my hair just long enough for me to rise beyond his reach. My stomach was already roiling from the blow I’d received, but the nausea intensified a hundredfold as I flew above the ground. Thaddeus watched me for just a few seconds before pointing to the guys holding Cam. “It only takes one order for your boyfriend to die,” he said to me. “I’d
prefer
to kill him, in fact.”

I flinched, and one of the guys holding Cam hauled off and punched him in the face. Another followed with a punch to the ribs. Cam slumped forward, limp.

“What do you want from me?” I cried.

“Just stay away from us. You interfere again, and he pays the price.”

With that, Thaddeus picked up Cam and threw him over his shoulder and started to run. He headed into the woods.

I waited until Thaddeus and his group turned on to the path to the harbor, and the only Irin combatants left in the clearing were not moving. Then I dropped from my spot ten feet in the air, jarring my back and twisting an ankle.

I stopped for a moment to catch my breath and shake out my foot, praying I’d be able to run on it. But I couldn’t escape the panicked thoughts that had bombarded me the second I touched down.

They had Cam.

What would they do with him?

A dark figure emerged from behind a tree. I almost sobbed with relief when I saw him. Some part of me still believed that he could somehow make this right. “Jack? Jack, is that you?”

The bandanna across his forehead held the hair back from his face, and his steel gray eyes glinted in the predawn light. He looked different from the way I remembered. He’d always reminded me of a wolf—coiled energy in every inch of his lanky frame—but before, this had been tempered by his youth. Now the sense of vulnerability was gone. In the short time since I’d seen him, his shoulders had gotten broader, his chest thicker, his face harder. Jack had turned into a man.

When he spoke, the ice in his voice made me shiver. “You should have come with me.”

“What are they going to do with him?” I whispered.

“Hard to say. They plan on using him for leverage. But you heard Thaddeus. He’s pretty pissed. Cam killed one of his best friends, you know.”

An image of a face I’d seen on TV flashed before me. The one that could make sounds and destroy eardrums. Charles Scholz.

I eased my weight onto my sore leg. It hurt, but seemed able to bear the pressure. “Cam didn’t kill anyone,” I said.

“He led them there. Just because he didn’t pull the trigger doesn’t mean he’s not responsible.”

“Is that why you messed with those paintballs? Because you were hoping he’d get killed?”

“It was a good way to do some damage without getting in the news.”

I walked a few paces, subtly stretching my ankle. I had little hope of convincing Jack to help me, but I had to try. And I had to be prepared to run if I failed. “I could have
died
, Jack, if I hadn’t had my goggles on. Alisha had serious internal injuries. Not to mention that you flipped our car over when you ran us off the road. It was only luck that kept you from killing someone. You don’t have a problem with that?”

For a moment, the casual mask he’d been wearing slipped, and a shadow of regret passed over his features. “You weren’t supposed to be there. They told me it was the juniors that did those games.”

“I’m training with them. You have to know whatever you do can come back and hurt me. And even if it didn’t, it’s still wrong. You’re playing with people’s lives, Jack. Killing people. Innocent people.”

He shrugged. “We’re going to destroy the Program, one way or another. If we take out a few people along the way, so be it.”

“That’s it? All you’re about now is hate?’

“I’m about getting even,” Jack said. “I’m about getting my share. You talk about peace and doing good, but it’s only for some people. Not me. It’s never been for me.”

I felt sick. The boy I knew had become something twisted and evil. Or maybe it had always been inside him, waiting for the right time to emerge. “You’re going to have to kill me, then.”

Jack reached toward me. “It doesn’t have to be like this. You can still come with me. You’ll be safe, I swear.”

“I’m safe now. At least I should be.” The cold and damp of the ground seeped into my bare feet, and I shivered.

Jack dropped his arm, his expression hardening. “None of you are safe. Your own people aren’t even loyal. How do you think we knew where to find you?”

I gaped at him, scarcely able to process what he was saying. “What do you mean? You followed us here. It isn’t like we were hiding.”

He laughed. “Come on, Danny. You haven’t figured it out yet? How we know when you’re having a party or playing a stupid paintball game?”

My whole body quivered when I realized exactly what he meant. “Someone’s been giving you information. Someone inside Delcroix.” I thought I might fall to my knees with the weight of it.

“Apparently.” Jack shrugged and smiled that little smile I suddenly hated with all my being. “We know better than to trust our informer. Half the time we’re being set up, the other half we’re given the keys to the castle. It’s all a game. But it’s a game we’re determined to win.”

“They let you in? During Initiation?”

“Let’s just say the guard wasn’t at his post.”

“I’ll kill him,” I whispered. I pictured black hair with wings of white, and blue eyes that made you think of the sea. “I’ll kill him myself.”

“It’s not worth it,” Jack said. “There’s probably a hundred more behind him. You can’t trust them. Any of them.”

“No.”

“Come with me.” Jack’s voice was low, seductive. “They’re moving me up, Danny. I’m going to meet with Gregori after we pull this off. He wants me to train with his people in D.C. He just needed me to prove that I’m ready.”

Gregori. The D.C. cell. The last few pieces fell into place, and I knew Jack was lost.

Meanwhile, every minute we talked, Cam was being forcibly moved farther away.

“I’m sorry, Jack, but I am not coming with you. I’m with the Program. Forever.”