The Blood Guard (The Blood Guard series) (16 page)

Sipping her coffee, Greta came forward. “How long has traffic been stopped?” she asked.

“Quarter hour or so,” Dawkins said. “Why?”

“Long enough for people to get out of their cars?” She pointed.

Twenty car lengths away, coming between the lanes of stopped vehicles, were a half-dozen shadowy figures. They carried long blades that flickered with light.

“Everyone out, pronto!” Dawkins said. “Use the hole in back. Our friends might notice a side door opening, but I doubt they know about Greta’s renovations to the rear of the vehicle.”

We went single file, Dawkins following with the swords he’d borrowed from the Bend Sinister compound.

The bedroom was a disaster. Light streamed in from the holes Izzy had stabbed through the ceiling, and bits of broken motor home were scattered all over the carpet. We looked through the jagged, five-foot-wide hole and down into the next car, where a sleepy-looking business woman was doing her makeup in the rearview mirror.

Dawkins pushed aside the dangling aluminum ladder and waved us forward. “Let’s not dawdle, kids.”

First he lowered Sammy to the pavement, then Greta. He held me back for an instant, whispering, “I’m relying on you to help me protect these two.” I dropped down, then Dawkins landed beside me.

“Everyone, stay low and follow me,” Dawkins said. He crouched and started to work his way backward between the lines of stalled cars. But abruptly he stopped short.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I thought they were only in front,” he said, pointing, “but they’re approaching from both directions.”

Coming toward us were another four Bend members. They were still fifteen car lengths away, but they’d spotted us. One, a woman, had blonde hair. Ms. Hand.

“Guys,” Sammy said, his voice rising. “We are totally surrounded. Should we just give up?”

“Don’t worry, Sammy,” I said. “It’ll be okay.”

“For you, maybe,” he said, looking me full in the eye. “But
my
foster parents are totally going to fry me. The Head guy will get rid of me, just like he did the Warners’ other foster kid.”

“Only if they catch us,” Dawkins told him. “A big if!”

“Of
course
they’re going to catch us! There are four of us with, like, two little swords. You guys are going to get us all killed!”

“Calm down, Sammy,” Greta said. She reached up to squeeze his shoulder, but at her touch he whirled away to the edge of the highway, then sprinted down the shoulder, straight toward Ms. Hand’s group.

“They kidnapped me!” he yelled as he ran. “They made me go with them!”

We watched, stunned.

“I
liked
him,” Greta said. “Why’s he betraying us?”

“Has he been lying to us the whole time?” I asked.

Dawkins shook his head. “Sammy’s just a scared kid, Ronan. His foster parent
s
—
w
ell, they sound rather messed up. I’d be afraid of the Bend Sinister Head, too.”

“But which way should we go?” Greta asked, a desperate edge to her voice.

Dawkins pointed left, at the highway divider. Traffic on our side was at a dead stop, but across the divider, on the other side, cars were rocketing past at seventy miles an hour. “That way,” he said. “We go that way.”

C
H
A
PT
E
R
21
:

A THOUSAND LITTLE TESTS

I
looked at Dawkins. Was he crazy?
“
This
way?” I asked.

Sammy had already reached Ms. Hand and her team. They were calmly working their way through the stalled traffic toward the shoulder, not in any particular hurry. I guess they thought we were trapped.

They were right.

“
Over
the median,” Dawkins said, leaning down and making a stirrup of his hands.
“
A
cross
the highway.”

“
Over
my dead body,” Greta said. “
Not
in your wildest dreams.”

“No time to argue, Greta. Give me your foot and over you go.” Dawkins extended his clasped fingers. “You two get off the highway while I stop this bunch here.”

“I don’t like this!” Greta said, putting her right foot into Dawkins’ hands.

He flung her up. With a startled yelp, she arced neatly over the divider and onto the shoulder on the other side.

“Listen, Ronan,” Dawkins whispered. “Greta is brave and smart, but that’s not enough in this fight. You’re not a Blood Guard yet, but that doesn’t mean you can’t protect Greta. If something happens to me,
you
have to get her to her father. I’m counting on you.”

“Sure, but nothing’s going t
o
—
”
I started to say, but he’d already grabbed my foot and thrown me over.

“So what now?” Greta asked, dragging me against the divider. Cars shot past from right to left, in loud bursts of noise.

I looked back. Behind us, a half dozen of the Bend Sinister
agents were closing in on Dawkins, their swords raised.

Four other agents were focused on us. I watched as, fifty feet to our left, the first of them easily swung himself over the divider.

“They’re coming after us!” I shouted.

“That’s why you need to
run
!” Dawkins gestured for us to go; then he stepped out onto the shoulder and faced the six swordsmen coming at him. “Huzzah!” he cried, swinging his swords and galloping their way.

I took Greta’s hand, which was cold and sweaty. A moving van thundered past, and I yelled, “Now!” and pulled her across the two empty innermost lanes.

That was as far as we got before a big pickup truck almost ran us down. Behind us in the fast lanes, a caravan of motorcycles passed, revving their engines.

And then the next lane was clear and it was time to run again.

I stepped forward and tugged at Greta’s hand, but she wouldn’t move. She was shaking.

“Greta? Only a few more lanes!” I shouted.

“
I
—
I
can’t.” She wouldn’t look at me, just stared straight ahead. “I don’t want to end up like Dawkins at the truck stop.”

Cars swerved around us where we stood in the road. A convertible. Some squat little economy cars. A lumbering white SUV.

“We can do this,” I said, yanking her forward.

We were more than halfway across the highway when Greta shrieked, “Ronan!” and stopped again.

Coming across the lanes we’d already traversed were the four agents of the Bend Sinister. While we watched, the lead agent jogged forward into the empty second lane, raising a big sword over his head. I recognized the welt over his brow: Mr. Four. His face was as blank as ever, but he was moving faster than usua
l
—
p
robably thrilled to find us frozen there in the middle of the highway.

When he was six feet away, a dump truck struck him. We heard the
whump
, the shrill of its brakes, and then he and the truck were past.

Greta flinched. “They don’t even care if they get hit, Ronan.”

“We’ve got to keep going,” I told her, squeezing her hand. “We’re almost home free. It won’t get any worse.”

And then it did.

Above the rumble and shush of the traffic, the bleat and blare of horns, rose another nois
e
—
a
piercing metallic screech. I looked right and saw a school bus skidding, its brakes locked, its back end sliding around as the bus spun sideways. It was empty except for the driver, I noted with relief, at the same moment I realized it was rolling over.

It fell onto its side and slid roof-first down the highway, hurtling across three lanes right to where we stood frozen in the road.

“Let’s go!” I said, but Greta pulled her hand back so hard that I fell to my knees.

So this was how it would end. The two of us crushed by a rolling school bus in a multicar pileup. Safeguard your friend, Dawkins had told me. Protect her. And I’d managed to get her all of forty feet. I threw myself at her again and caught her hand in mine. This time, I wasn’t going to let go.

The bus was twenty feet away, and we were the same distance from safety at the edge of the highway. We’d never make it.

The three remaining Bend agents were walking forward across the lanes, apparently not worried about the bus, their swords drawn.

Behind them a spindly tall shaft of metal blazed silver in the morning sunlight: Dawkins had leaned the RV’s aluminum ladder up against the divider. It pivoted like a seesaw as he ran up its length and leaped high into the air.

He sailed clear over the heads of the Bend agents and landed mid-stride. And then he blurred, just like my mom had done.

I heard Greta cough, felt her wrist wrenched from my fingers, and she vanished.

Dawkins.

He’d picked her up in his arms and bounded across the last few lanes. In a blink the two of them reappeared on the grassy embankment, faraway and safe.

Dawkins had grabbed Greta and left me behind, in the path of the school bus, with three agents at my back.

Abandoning me because I couldn’t take care of my friend.

A thousand little tests, he’d said, and I had failed the first one that came my way. So he’d swooped in and left me on the highway like so much trash. Maybe I wasn’t Blood Guard material, but did that mean my life wasn’t worth anything?

It was.
I
was.

And then I was running.

One step.

The bus was so close now that I was already in its shado
w
—
t
he remains of its busted windows briefly glinting as it rolled, the wheels and undercarriage coming around to squash me, the noise of it drowning out everything in the world.

A second step.

Time stretched and slowed. The noises around me dropped an octave, as if everything had been plunged underwater, and the light around me dimmed.

And a leap.

I threw myself forward. My jump carried me the last twenty-five feet, over the shoulder and past Dawkins and Greta, all the way to the top of the embankment, where I
twanged
against the chain-link fence and bounced to the ground.

Then time snapped back to norma
l
—
c
olors brightened and sounds sharpened and I was gasping and watching from safety as the school bus bowled over the space I’d been a half second before.

The three Bend agents who’d been behind me disappeared underneath it.

The bus bounced up in the air and kept rolling.

In its wake, the men lay flat on the pavement like splattered bugs.

That could have been me
, I thought.
Should
have been me. Except that I’d managed to get out of the way. How?

Below me, Dawkins caught my eye. “Well done, you.”

I looked out over the wreckage lining the highway. The school bus had come to a stop on its roof, and I saw the driver punch out one of the windows and clamber down the side.

The broken bodies of the Bend agents littered the road. They should have been dead, but they were slowly moving, limbs that had been twisted into impossible angles straightening themselves, popping into place.

“They’re alive,” I said. “They’re all still alive.”

“If you call theirs a life,” Dawkins said, standing and pulling Greta up with him. “They’re just empty vessels of flesh, Ronan. Like golems. Or remote-control robots. There are only two ways to stop them for good. One is to burn them so that they can’t come back.”

As he spoke, I felt someone staring at me: Ms. Hand, standing on the far side of the divider, her arms crossed. Beside her was Sammy. He gripped the fence, something silvery between his wrists: cuffs, I realized. Ms. Hand had handcuffed him.

“She’s got Sammy,” I said.

“That’s unfortunate,” Dawkins said. “I do wish he hadn’t run off like that.”

Ms. Hand’s gaze chilled me until I was shivering. Dawkins helped me to my feet and said, “The other way to stop them? Break their Hand.”

I looked at Greta, who was practically comatose, and at bloodied and bruised Dawkins. I was angry at Dawkins for abandoning me on the highway, but mostly I was angry at myself. I’d been tested, and I had failed, again and again. We’d been running all night from this woman and her vacant-eyed henchmen, and they were still after us. They were never going to give up. Maybe it was time to stop running.

“Break their Hand?” I repeated. “Then that’s what we have to do.”

“All in good time,” Dawkins promised. “All in good time.”

C
H
A
PT
E
R
22
:

GRETA, PURE AND SIMPLE

C
ompared to what we’d just come through, scaling the fence at the crest of the embankment was a cinch. We ended up on a street of small businesse
s
—
g
as station, convenience store, and, at the corner, a fast-food restaurant where a silvery sports car sat idling in the drive-thru.

“That’ll do,” Dawkins announced and broke into a run.

The young man behind the wheel looked half-asleep, though he snapped awake when Dawkins opened the car door, grabbed him by the lapels of his black leather jacket, and lifted him from the driver’s seat. Dawkins set the startled man on his feet, spun him around, and pushed him away.

“What are you doing?” the man cried. “Help!”

“I am terribly sorry,” Dawkins said. “Greta, take the backseat. Ronan, shotgun.” We got in.

“You’re not taking anything, buddy,” the man said, raising his fists like a boxer.

At that moment, the drive-thru window slid open and an arm reached out with a bag and a coffee. Dawkins took the bag and threw it over the man’s head, crying, “Catch!”

Startled, the man reached up.

That gave Dawkins enough time to leap into the driver’s seat and peel out of the lot. He looped the car through a bunch of turns until we’d reached a wide, multilane street. “Wisconsin Avenue,” he announced. “It stretches all the way from Maryland, where we are now, into Georgetown, where we will find Mr. Sustermann’s house.”

“I can’t believe you just stole that man’s car!” I protested.

“Why are you still surprised when I do things like this, Ronan?” Dawkins replied. “Honestly, I think you would have come to expect it from me by now.”

A little more than an hour later, Dawkins turned down a tree-lined street of pretty brownstone houses. They reminded me of hom
e
—
B
rooklyn, not Stanhope.

“We’re here.” They were the first words any of us had said in ages. Dawkins drove a full circle around the block before pulling to the curb and shutting off the engine. “Just want to be absolutely sure that there are no ugly guests going to drop in on us. There is no reason whatsoever to believe the Bend Sinister have identified Greta…but one can never be too safe.”

“Greta?” I said, shaking her. “Greta, you’re home.”

Her head jerked up, and she was instantly awake. “Home?”

“Your father’s place.” Dawkins gestured at a brick building with white trim.

Greta sat up straight, wiped her eyes, and pulled at the tangled mess of her hair. “I need a scrunchie.”

“Why don’t you go and have a little father-daughter reunion, and once that’s over, Ronan and I will come in and have a sit-down. I’ll explain what happened, maybe ask for his assistance.”

She opened the back door of the car. “All right, I’m going. Ronan, you’re okay?”

“I’m fine,” I said. “Go see your dad.”

We watched as she vanished behind the bushes near the front door.

“You left me to
die
,” I said, staring straight ahead. “You grabbed Greta.”

“I couldn’t very well carry both of you,” Dawkins said. “And I figured you had the better chance of survival.”

“The better chance? Are you telling me you took a minute to figure out the odds?”

Dawkins sighed. “No, I didn’t calculate any odds. I grabbed Greta,” he said slowly, “because she is a Pure.”

“What?” I turned to him. He looked very serious, and very old. “A Pure? You’re saying Greta is one of those thirty-six special people?”

“I’m saying it’s a good thing you never looked through that Verity Glass at
he
r
.
It would have been the opposite of those two gray-haired goons with the RV. The blaze of Greta’s soul would have momentarily blinded you.”

“Greta Sustermann is a Pure,” I repeated.

“Yes, Ronan. Your mother, Bree, was one of her guardians back in Brooklyn, but after that house fire, she took a leave from the Guard.”

I shook my head, confused. “But Greta’s no saint. She’s jus
t
—
s
he’s kind of full of herself and mouthy, to be honest.”

“The Pure aren’t
saints
, Ronan. Not goody-goodies. They’re just deeply, unavoidably
good
people. They make everyone bette
r
—
j
ust by existing.”

And all at once I knew it was true.

I’d done more and been braver in the past sixteen hours than at anytime in my life until now. Was that because Greta had been beside me? She cared so much about doing the right thing that maybe it had rubbed off on me a tiny bit. I searched my feelings, and I knew that I didn’t want her to think less of me. Instead, some part of me wanted the opposit
e
—
t
o be worthy of her good opinion. Is that what a Pure did for everyone?

“I don’t understand. If there are supposed to be Guards on Greta, why weren’t they with her on the train?”

“That’s why I was there,” Dawkins said, slapping his chest. “When Greta goes back and forth between her parents,
I
—
o
r Ogabe, or another Oversee
r
—
t
ag along, make sure of the handoff from the two Guards in Brooklyn.”

“You weren’t there because of me?” I said.

“That’s why I had your mother put you on that particular train. It was a two-birds-with-one-stone sort of thing. Had I known there were going to be so many Bend agents after you, I would have called for reinforcements.” He exhaled sharply. “It turned into such a mess. She was never supposed to cross paths with us.”

“And that’s why you grabbed Greta instead of me.”

“Of course. I would have felt terrible if that bus had taken you out, Ronan, but I had no choice in the matter:
I had to save Greta
. Because she’s not supposed to die.”

“Is that why the Bend Sinister are chasing us? Because she’s a Pure?”

“Afraid not. If they had any idea of what Greta is, your Ms. Hand would never have let her escape.” He poked me in the shoulder. “No, they’re pursuing us because of you. But I don’t yet know why.”

“Two guards in Brooklyn, you said. Two here in Washington, DC.” Something became clear to me. “And you knew where Greta’s father lives. Is Greta’s father one of the Guard?”

Dawkins ran his fingers through his hair and said, “Yes, her father is one of the Blood Guard. We recruited him shortly after Greta was born. He was already a lawman, so he was a prime candidate. That’s also why her father has always been s
o
—
a
damant, shall we say
?
—
a
bout making sure she knows how to take care of herself. It’s not just that he’s with the FBI, as Greta keeps prattling on about. He believes in self-reliance. Like your mum.”

A banging on the window startled us.

It was Greta, back from her dad’s house, and seeing the horrified expression on her face, we got out of the car in a hurry.

“What is it?” Dawkins said, taking her by the shoulders. “Greta, what’s wrong?”

“My dad,” she said in a low voice. “He’s not there! Th
e
—
t
he place is trashed, and there’s blood in the hallway, an
d
—
a
n
d
—
a
n
d
—
”

“Breathe, Greta,” Dawkins said.

She took a deep, shaky lungful of air. “And in his downstairs office, there’s a body.”