DANIEL AND I MOVED carefully, crossing to the next tree then waiting there until they finished scanning the treetops and decided Ash had been alone. They carried him away and we continued on.
Now and then I’d hear a tree limb creak, but that was it. Then I caught the faint sound of footfalls on the ground. When I peered over I could make out the pale shape of faces moving in the forest. Two of them. I squinted.
“Derek and Kit,” I whispered.
Daniel nodded. We were about to head away from them when I heard the crackle of undergrowth. Derek froze, then yanked Kit down. Their faces vanished, their dark clothing blending into the night.
Daniel and I watched as two figures stepped through a cluster of trees. Men dressed in camouflage gear, carrying rifles. Tranquilizer rifles, I hoped. They were heading straight for where Derek and Kit were hiding.
I tensed, but they just kept looking around, not calling for backup, unaware of how close Derek and Kit were.
Daniel had tensed, too. His jaw worked, as if he instinctively wanted to use his shout. Of course he couldn’t. Invoke his power and every Cabal guy within a kilometer radius would come running.
I laid my hand on his. “It’s okay. Derek knows they’re there.”
Daniel nodded and rubbed my thumb. I looked down at my hand on his. There was a time, not long ago, when I wouldn’t have done that. Rafe was right. Something had changed, and I don’t think either Daniel or I had even realized that. It was the little things, like this, reaching out to reassure each other, the chaos giving us an excuse.
I leaned down to focus on the men below. If they walked under us, we could have leaped on them. They didn’t. But they were still heading straight for—
Derek pounced, slamming one guy to the ground before his partner had time to react. I heard a sizzle, and a bolt like lightning flew from Kit’s fingers. The other guy stumbled back. Kit took him down with a right hook. Beside him, Derek let out a hiss of pain. I didn’t see what had happened—presumably his opponent used his supernatural powers.
Derek flipped his target onto his stomach and pinned him there as Kit fought with his. At a thump from below, I glanced over to see that the spot beside me was empty. Daniel was on the ground, running toward them. He grabbed the guns and threw them aside, then helped Kit subdue his target.
As the fight ended, I crawled closer. I stayed in the tree, though, where I had a better vantage point if anyone else came. They had just gotten both men secured when Corey tore from the woods.
“I missed the fight?” he whispered. “Damn.”
Derek wheeled on him. “Where’s Chloe? You were supposed to be—”
“I’m right here,” whispered Chloe as she stepped through.
I inched along until I was nearly over them. Daniel noticed me first and nodded. Kit crouched to take a radio from one man. I realized they were unconscious. Knocked out or tranquilized. Daniel bent to take the other radio.
“Guns?” Corey asked.
“Just take the darts,” Kit whispered.
“Is it okay if I stay grounded?” Corey asked. “The monkey route really isn’t my thing.”
Kit said it seemed safe enough now, and asked Daniel if he’d stay down, too, keeping the fighters on the ground. Daniel glanced up at me, just a quick check. I nodded.
“I’m staying here,” I whispered down. “I’ll keep an aerial eye out for trouble.”
“I’ll come with you,” Chloe said.
Derek tried to stop her. She said it made sense for her to be in the trees with me in case of a ground attack, and that convinced him. Not that it mattered, I think—she’d have done what she wanted. She obviously didn’t take his crap. Still, it would drive me crazy, constantly needing to remind my boyfriend that I could handle myself just fine. My brother was bad enough.
Chloe climbed up and we set off. The guys broke into pairs to get a little distance from one another, so there weren’t four of them tromping together. They stayed close enough to keep an ear on the others in case they needed help. Chloe and I followed from the trees.
As we moved, I could hear the distant noise of the searchers, but none got close again. I kept an ear out for Hayley, hoping she might have avoided capture, but there was no sound or sign of her, and I knew she’d been taken.
Finally, Derek led us to a spot he’d picked on the edge of the woodlot. There was a house just past the tree line. It was dark—everyone gone or asleep.
Chloe and I climbed down and found Kit easing open the door on a pickup.
“We’ll take this,” he said. “Boys? Get up front and push when I give the signal. We’re going to roll it out of the drive, then I’ll get it started. Everyone can pile in the back while I do that.”
Corey looked over sharply. Kit was stealing the truck? I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. He’d been on the run for years; he’d do whatever it took to get his kids out of here. Daniel didn’t seem shocked at all. He’s all for law and order—unless it interferes with common sense and necessity.
When Kit released the brake, the guys rolled the pickup out of the drive. With Derek’s super strength it was easily done, and Kit decided to have them keep pushing—from the rear now—down to the first side road. He got around the corner, then we crawled into the truck bed and lay down while he hot-wired it. Within minutes we were off, leaving the Cabals behind.
We drove for two hours, then ditched the truck a couple of kilometers from a roadside motel and walked back to that motel.
Mr. Bae checked in while we hid. Then we made our way in twos to the room. Mr. Bae left to make a call on the prepaid cell he’d picked up in the first major town. He was calling Calvin Antone to begin the process of negotiation.
On the car ride, he’d told Derek and Chloe about Antone’s suggestion. To my surprise, it was Chloe who’d protested, while Derek just sat there, processing. Chloe was worried about how the Cabal treated werewolves. Beyond that, though, she wasn’t personally averse to the idea. They’d been running for months and had all come to realize there was no foreseeable end to that running. They’d talked about moving to Australia, but no one was particularly keen on that. Even if they made it there, it would involve more hiding and more lying.
It wasn’t hard for Kit to convince Chloe that he’d never take any step that would endanger Derek. He’d uprooted his life a decade ago and spent the intervening years on the road to protect him. Now Derek had come fully into his powers and he was, by any standard, a success. Chloe’s own powers had apparently gotten off to a rough start, but she was also a Project Genesis success. Same went for Tori. They’d all learned to control any side effects and were super-powered supernaturals, which made them valuable. Simon wasn’t showing the same power boost, but he hadn’t displayed any negative issues, either—just a smooth transition into a supernatural.
Still, the Nasts had been the ones to kidnap Kit and hold him captive for months. He seemed remarkably unconcerned about that. It was business, he said. He’d been part of a top-secret science group and the Nasts wanted to know more about it. His imprisonment had been more like house arrest. The worst part of it had been worrying about his boys, but he couldn’t ask the Nasts to check on them without, in effect, handing them over, so he’d had to trust they were safe while he worked on getting free.
When he was released, it was actually Mattias Nast who’d helped. The same Mattias Nast now heading the work in Vancouver. Not a nice guy, Kit admitted, but Nast was a businessman, inclined to be reasonable if it helped him climb the corporate ladder. Bringing us all to the fold would certainly do that.
No one was forgetting what the Edison Group did to Liz Delaney and a couple of other subjects. Not forgetting. Not forgiving. But the people who’d done that—Dr. Davidoff and others—were dead. That knee-jerk reaction to problems seemed to have died with them. And it wasn’t the St. Clouds we hoped to deal with anyway. As “nasty” as the Nasts were, Kit felt he could work with them . . . at least for a few years, long enough for us to grow up into the kind of powerful supernaturals they wanted, and use those very skills to fight back.
Is fighting back what Antone expected? He’d never said it, but he’d hinted that he didn’t expect us to grow up to be Cabal wage slaves. Just let the Cabal take care of us until we were old enough to take care of ourselves. Maybe that meant fighting back. Maybe it just meant breaking away safely. Either way, it was freedom, something we had no shot at otherwise.
All this wasn’t to say we could trust the Cabals. We couldn’t. But Antone had provided a detailed proposal for negotiations, and Kit thought it was workable.
First, though, Kit needed to speak to Antone.
So he did that. When he came back almost an hour later, he said only that he needed to wait for a call. That came twenty minutes later. He took it outside and returned to say a preliminary negotiation meeting had been arranged. It would be tomorrow in Buffalo, where their ordeal had begun, and he would attend alone while we stayed here in Pennsylvania.
While Kit had been doing all that, Chloe had managed to make contact with Liz again, and she was outside, patrolling. That let us relax a little—you can’t beat an invisible guard. Though we’d napped in the truck, everyone was exhausted. Kit said he’d stay awake and “make a few calls” while we got some sleep.