The Quest (14 page)

With our bare living room so frequently being used for training, our dining room became the new semi-official lounge, though many of us simply retired to our bedrooms when we had time off. Ever since walking out on Terry’s offer, Steven was seen even less around the house, and for a while he didn’t even help with the cooking.

It was therefore a bit of a shock to find him casually leaning against the living-room wall when I arrived to start my lesson with Daniel and Walter one day. Steven looked down at me, his mouth wired into a tight frown, and said quietly, “Teach me.”

I nodded. I neither expected nor particularly wanted a civil tone from Steven. That was just his way.

I squared off with him and showed him what he had been missing out on. It must have been quite a blow to his ego to be knocked down in straight matches by someone three years younger and more than a head shorter, but Steven refused to let it show.

“You’re good, Adrian,” he said quietly. “I can learn from you.”

I smiled and, though I couldn’t be certain, Steven seemed to smile a little too.

Steven agreed to join my classes during the times that Terry wasn’t sharing the room with us. He was a pretty fast learner and caught up quickly. I knew Terry was doing well with her group, but I wasn’t shy about pointing out to her that between the two of us, I was clearly the more skilled instructor. Terry replied tartly, “Popularity and skill are not the same, Half-head.”

As word of our training school spread through the Guardian settlement, several families approached us hoping to enroll their children here. They even offered to pay us, but Terry turned them down, citing overcrowding. Terry had six students and I now had seven including Alia, and besides, ours wasn’t a weekly or even biweekly course. Outsiders wouldn’t be able to keep up. We had only accepted Patrick because his foster parents agreed to let him come for a minimum of two hours every day even after school restarted, which was now only two weeks away.

Now that training had become routine, and no one had quit yet, Terry decided that it was time we got the shooting range set up. Leaving me in charge of the house, she disappeared from Walnut Lane for a week. When she finally returned, she had brought a sizeable collection of handguns as well as a fair amount of money which she decreed was for gym mats and bullets. Terry never told me where or how she got her hands on the money and weapons, and I didn’t press her. I trusted Terry enough to know that she hadn’t killed anyone innocent for them.

I begged Terry to spare some of the money for the pantry. With everyone training for hours every day, there was a proportional increase in their daily calorific requirements. Or to put it bluntly, everyone ate like horses. I had to find ways to get the most out of our very tight budget. In order to save money on water, we had limited everyone to five-minute showers, much to the dismay of Alia, who was notorious even among the girls for her terribly long baths. We were saving in other areas too, such as turning off nonessential electronics like the TV and air conditioner, but it still wasn’t enough.

At my suggestion, we finally accepted six young students from the Walnut Lane families. There were four boys and two girls, seven to nine years old, and we put Alia in charge of teaching them.

“Do I have to?”
my sister asked uneasily.

“We’ve got to eat somehow,” I said. “It’s only twice a week, and if you make enough money, you can even start taking baths again.”

“But most of those kids are bigger than me.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Alia!” I laughed. “They’re not that much bigger, and you’re older anyway. You’re a Guardian Knight. I’m sure you can survive a pack of children.”

“I don’t know how I’m ever going to get them to listen to me, Addy.”

I ruffled her hair a bit, saying lightly, “Then you’ll learn something too, my brave little bedbug.”

Alia scowled.

Admittedly, my sister probably had the toughest crowd. Unlike the kids Terry and I were training, Alia’s students were sent here by their parents and consequently weren’t as dedicated to learning, especially from a skinny little healer girl. Alia never looked the hero on a normal sunny day, but I knew that my sister was not only capable of fighting but entirely fearless whenever the occasion called for it. Alia’s young students would learn respect soon enough, once they looked up at her from the flat of their backs.

Terry soon had a proper shooting range up and running in the basement. She also managed to find enough secondhand gym mats to cover the living-room floor, turning it into a proper CQC dojo. As I continued to teach my students the basics of hand-to-hand combat, muffled popping noises could be heard from downstairs. In the last month, we had transformed our house into a semi-military camp, and it worried me that everyone seemed to be accepting this as normal. I wondered once again if we were doing the right thing.

“Is something bothering you?” James asked me one evening when he noticed that I was quieter than usual.

I shrugged. “I guess I’m just a bit tired. Tired and scared.”

“Scared?” repeated James. “Scared of what?”

“This,” I replied, gesturing around the converted living room. “All this insanity. Terry’s idea to make you into Guardian Knights. Now you’re all shooting guns downstairs as well. I just feel like every day we’re digging ourselves deeper into a world of trouble.”

James looked surprised. “But you’re Adrian Howell,” he said with a chuckle. “If even half of what I’ve heard about you is true, you should be used to getting into trouble by now.”

“That doesn’t mean I enjoy it,” I replied frostily.

“I’m sorry,” said James, taken aback. “I just figured that you were use to all this… this ‘insanity’ as you call it.”

I doubted I would ever get used to it. “It’s not just me or Alia or Terry this time,” I said, slowly shaking my head. “It’s everyone. I wish I could believe that you all really know what you’re getting yourselves into, but you probably have no idea.”

There was something about killing a person, even in self-defense, that took a small part of your own soul with it. It wasn’t something you could ever prepare for in the dojo. James would have to learn that the hard way, just like everyone else.

James asked hesitantly, “Do you regret it?”

“Regret what?”

“Becoming a warrior.”

“What’s to regret?” I scoffed. “It was never my choice. I’m a destroyer. Destroyers fight.”

James nodded. “My father said the same thing to me once. My parents were both Lancer Knights. I hope I’ll see them again, but that’s just hope. They’re probably dead.”

“You don’t know that,” I insisted.

“No, I don’t,” said James, fixing me with a determined look. “But until I find out for sure, I’m going to fight. Maybe you’re right, Adrian. Maybe we don’t know what we’re getting into. But who the hell ever knows that? I’m glad we’re doing this. After New Haven, I couldn’t just sit around and wait.”

I smiled sadly. “You’ll make a great Knight someday.”

“Terry’s an amazing teacher.”

“Yeah,” I agreed quietly, “she is.”

Terry had argued that what we were doing now was an absolute necessity for our very survival, and she was probably right. Times had changed. But I often lay awake at night remembering how suddenly and how easily people can be torn from this world. I lay awake wondering how many more would follow, and how soon.

Chapter 7: The Cracks in the Song

Mrs. Harding stopped by at the end of August to check up on us and make sure that the house was still standing. She pretended not to care about the sweat-stained gym mats covering the living-room floor. At least the walls were undamaged, and we didn’t show her the modifications we had made to the basement.

The real reason for Mrs. Harding’s visit was to make sure that we continued our schooling. The new school year would start in a couple of days.

Scott, Heather, Candace and Steven were done with high school and weren’t about to head off to college just yet. Rachael had one more year of high school left and James and Felicity had two, but where James and Felicity grudgingly agreed to finish their education, Rachael flat-out refused.

“I’ll take a high-school equivalency exam and be done with it,” she said, and Mrs. Harding agreed to set Rachael up with one as soon as she was ready.

Daniel, Walter and Susan had plenty of classroom years left, and Mrs. Harding accepted no excuses from them.

Max still hadn’t recovered enough to return to school. Combat training with Terry had brought the boy significantly out of his shell, but only while he was training. On the mat, Max was ferocious, and Terry, who rarely praised anyone, insisted that Max was a born soldier. However, when resting or at night, Max quickly deflated, and was often emotionally unstable. I knew because I still shared a room with him, and he regularly cried in his sleep. Mrs. Harding, who used to be a math teacher in addition to a Guardian Knight, agreed to take Max as a private student in her home.

Alia also refused to enter school. I had hoped that living here would have made my sister more used to being around people, and it had, up to a point. But Alia was never one to willingly step into a crowded room, and she felt little need to make new friends or seek a normal existence. I explained to Mrs. Harding how Alia had been home-schooled all her life.

Mrs. Harding asked her in a concerned tone, “Are you absolutely certain you don’t want to go, dear? You might have a lot of fun, you know.”

Alia shook her head, saying, “I don’t like noisy or crowded places.”

“Well, this house seems quite noisy and crowded,” Mrs. Harding logically pointed out. “How can it be so different from a classroom?”

“It’s different because I
have
to be here,” replied Alia. “Besides, once everyone goes to school, it’ll be quieter in the house.”

“But you have never even been to a school, child. How do you know it will be all that bad?”

Alia shrugged. “I’ve seen pictures.”

Mrs. Harding laughed. “Well, I suppose Max could use a classmate. I will teach you at my place.”

“Okay.”

That left just Terry and me.

Terry had dropped out of high school the previous year when Guardian families voiced opposition to her attending school with their children. Like Alia and me, Terry was a prime target for the Angels, and just being near other Guardian kids presented a risk to their safety. That was all before New Haven fell, and I wondered how those parents would feel about where their kids were now. In any case, Mrs. Harding had no chance of convincing Terry to return to school.

“I guess I’m done with it too,” I said, referring to both regular school and Mrs. Harding’s offer of home-schooling. “With the housekeeping and training, there’s just too much to do here.”

“Well, I suppose I can’t exactly order you,” said Mrs. Harding, “but I hope you know what you’re giving up, young man.”

I knew what I was giving up. In a way, I had given it up years ago. Cindy had tutored me ever since I met her, and I was very grateful for that. But I was a psionic destroyer, and while I still hoped that someday I could settle down and live a quieter life, for the time being, peace would just have to wait.

Once the new school year started, the house did get noticeably quieter. Most of the older kids had day jobs, and the younger ones wouldn’t return until the afternoon. Rachael and Steven still hung around, and Terry and I gave them extra training when we could spare the time.

In order to give our students enough training time after school hours, I took on most of the housekeeping during the daytime. Rachael helped out a lot, and Steven occasionally did too. For the most part, Terry left me to play househusband and spent her free time training. Cooking and cleaning for fourteen was no picnic, but that was exactly what I had dropped out of school for, so I kept my complaints to myself.

October was upon us in a blink, but this year, distracted by my many chores and worries, I had completely forgotten that the 12th was my own sixteenth birthday. Alia had to remind me.

Being on a very limited income for so many hungry mouths to feed, we weren’t about to celebrate anyone’s birthday in this house. Every meal was a bit of a party, anyway. But my sister had taken the time to telepathically tell everyone in the house to wish me a happy birthday, which embarrassed me to no end. The girls, especially Candace, thought it was hilarious.

There were no presents, of course, but Alia had fashioned a colorful card on which she simply wrote “Happy 16th, Addy.” Or so it seemed until I noticed that a dotted pattern around the edge of the card were actually Braille letters which read, “From your littlest bedbug, Alia. You are my best-ever unicorn. Thanks for always being there.” I stopped insisting that Alia sleep on her own side of the bed. Cindy was right: when my sister wanted her own space, she’d ask for it.

Between housekeeping, hand-to-hand combat training, and pistol practice in the basement shooting range, I felt that we had more than enough going on in this house, so I was decidedly unenthusiastic when, a week after my birthday, Terry suggested that we add yet another item to the program.

“Mind blocking?” I asked incredulously. “Who’s going to teach us?”

“Merlin already agreed,” said Terry. “Puppeteers are comparatively safe and would be a good start for those old enough.”

That would be Scott, Steven, Heather and Candace, who were all over eighteen years old. But Terry announced that she was going to join in too.

“I’m not much more than half a year to eighteen,” said Terry. “The age limit is arbitrary anyway. There’s always a risk to the mind when someone jacks it, but the only way to learn blocking is by doing.”

“Then count me in too,” I said.

Terry shook her head. “You’re not old enough.”

“You just said that’s arbitrary,” I argued. “Besides, I’ve already had controllers in my head quite a few times. I’m still sane.”

“That’s debatable,” Terry said with an evil grin. “But I won’t stop you. If Merlin agrees, you can join us.”

Aside from the added workload, I couldn’t deny having some reservations about throwing myself into mental blocking practice. I had repeatedly heard warnings about the possible long-term effects of psionic mind control on people who weren’t old enough to take it. But if we were really going to break through an Angel blockade around the Historian’s mountain, I couldn’t go in wondering when my body would be hijacked by another puppeteer or worse.