Exile (The Oneness Cycle) (3 page)

“A reversal,” Chris said.

“Exactly. And the Oneness was born.”

“How long ago was that?” Chris asked, clearly sceptical.

“No one knows for sure—a few thousand years, give or take.”

Chris leaned back against the couch and folded his arms across his big chest. “Uh-huh. What do they
do?”

Diane paused, her mind flipping through hundreds of still images, conversations, insights. “I think—”

She smiled and spread out her hands, beseeching Chris to believe her.

“I think they hold the world together.”

* * *

It rained all night, and when the sun rose, it cast its golden, rosy light on a wet, glistening world. April watched it come up from her perch on the rooftop, looking down over the sharply sloping streets to the neighbourhood and the harbour at the base of the cliff.

She heard the sound of a window being pushed open and a grunt as Richard climbed out of the second-story lookout. He made his way gingerly across the shining shingles and sat down next to April, handing her a warm travel mug.

She took a sip. Coffee. Nice and strong.

“Thanks.”

“No problem. You see anything?”

April turned her eyes back to the bright horizon, light shining off the bay waters beyond the town, and tried to scan the streets. The sun in her eyes made their gloom harder to penetrate. “Not yet.”

They made an odd couple—the six-foot-two black man with a neatly trimmed beard and close-shaved hair, wearing a suit, and the five-foot-two blonde with her hair in a ponytail and a blanket swathed around her shoulders.

The coffee warmed her quickly, and she shed the blanket. The sun warmed her bare shoulders and brightened the rose-vine tattoo inked across her right. She wore a tank top and track pants and sneakers. Ready to run.

Richard twined his fingers and pushed them outward, cracking his knuckles. “I gotta go to work. Mary’s coming with breakfast. You need anything else?”

“Naw. I’ll be fine.” She turned and met his eyes, smiled brightly. His care emanated back at her, warming her like the sun, and he smiled at her smile.

“Good day at work,” she said.

“Thanks. You take care.”

“Of course. I’m ready for anything.”

“You know what pride comes before.”

“All right, almost anything. But I’m not alone. So I’ll be fine.”

He grinned and pushed himself back up, careful of his footing. She laughed at the wet shingle debris clinging to the back of his suit.

“Brush off!”

“You got it!”

She turned her eyes back to the streets as Richard left. It was still hard to see, but what she was looking for would stand out. To her, anyway.

There were a multiplicity of gifts in the Oneness, no two exactly alike. April had eyes to see.

There. She saw the glint of metal, the mad pedalling, and the desperation.

Right on time.

The boy was only about a block away, flying down a narrow, cobbled street toward the glimmering waters of the harbour. He would be almost impossible to catch. Which was fine, because she didn’t need to catch him. She only needed to follow.

April disdained the window and stairs; traipsing through the house would take too much time. She cast off her blanket completely and abandoned the travel mug in the eaves trough where it wouldn’t roll away; grabbing the drainpipe with a gloved hand, she slid down and landed hard on the soft earth. Her legs were moving almost before she’d fully landed. To run.
There was nothing like it.

It was a quick sprint over level ground for fifty yards before she plunged downhill on the street leading through town. The run turned to a jog, her whole body jarring as she tried to outwit gravity and stay on her feet. The town before her still shone in the rising sun.

The boy on the bike disappeared over a second downhill plunge, and April picked up her speed, regaining sight of him just as he rode straight into the little cluster of fishing shacks and boathouses at the centre of the harbour. Beyond them, the sun was still rising. But this boy had been swallowed instead by shadows.

It took her ten minutes to reach the gloomy little huddle of huts. The sky overhead was clear and the bay calm; the storm had vanished as storms always did. But here it was dark, shadows extending from the closely constructed buildings. Boat masts stuck up behind them, bobbing slightly.

“Hello?” April called, worming her way between a couple of especially tight shacks. The bike lay abandoned outside them. The passage was narrow enough that she had to angle herself slightly to get through, and the slopes of both roofs met in the middle to plunge the space into shadow. Old plastic bottles and a gas can littered it. She could see a door on one side, closed, but definitely there.

She stared intently at it and saw a sparkle of light from beneath the door. Yeah, he was here.

With a tentative hand on the door handle, she called out again. “Anybody in there?”

No answer. She turned the handle and pushed.

The door opened easily. Inside, the shack was even gloomier than its side entranceway. One window, facing south, was covered with grime. It let in just enough light for April to make out the nets, stacks of lobster traps, and cases of bottled water stored in most of the shack’s space.

The boy sat crammed between two stacks of water, cases piled six high. His hair was blond and unruly, long enough to hang in his face. He was ten, maybe eleven. Maybe thirteen. April hadn’t been able to guess his age, and she hadn’t asked.

April took a step closer, holding out her hand like an offering. “Hey, Nick, are you okay?” she asked. Knowing full well he wasn’t.

“What are you doing here?” he asked. His voice quavering.

“I saw you riding down here … thought you might ride right into the bay.”

He smiled at that. “I’m a good rider.”

“So,” April asked, “you come here a lot?”

“Most days.”

“What’s the attraction?”

Nick shrugged. “It’s quiet.”

She let her eyes leave his face for a moment and noticed a stack of comic books shoved under the pallet of water. The space where he was sitting was less dusty, less cobwebbed, than most corners of the shack.
Quiet.
April thought of all the times she’d seen him tearing down here on his bike and wondered what kind of noise he was running from. Her own memories gave her plenty to work with—broken glass, shouting. The curses and the names. She grimaced. She’d excise it all in a heartbeat if she could—all of life before the Oneness. But Richard said her past was why she could see like she could—why, in this case, she was sensitive enough to know a boy fleeing and hiding when others thought he was just being a normal kid, flying down the hill for the sake of adrenaline.

She’d been reaching out to Nick for a couple of weeks now, finding him loitering around the village and buying him soda or lunch or whatever. She’d have to add comic books to the list. He treated her warily, and she didn’t ask him much about his life. Just talked to him and let him get comfortable in her presence.

“Listen, you had breakfast? You wanna go get some food?”

His eyes had that bright look in them. She spared him the need to answer and just reached out her hand.

He took it, and she pulled him to his feet.

* * *

They were waiting outside the fishing shack, silent and unmoving as mountains. One a big man, well over six feet and built like a hammer; the other smaller, grossly tattooed, impatient. They stood on either side of the narrow passage between shanties, where they couldn’t be seen by anyone coming through.

April knew they were there a second before she stepped out—a shadow, a sound, something gave them away. She thrust a hand behind her to stop Nick and said very softly, “Get back in there
now.”
She tried to follow suit, but the kid was too slow getting out of the way; the smaller man hooked her elbow and yanked. Her instincts blazed and she tried to turn on him, pulling on her arm and lashing out with her leg simultaneously, but there was no time; no room. She was out of the passageway, and Hammer-man landed a blow to the back of her head.

Chapter 3

Diane hadn’t slept much since her visit to the boys’ cottage on Wednesday night. She’d found herself pacing the dark rooms of her house in the wee hours that night, unhappily contemplating memories and things she knew, things she had seen. Reese’s face hung in the midst of all her thoughts, the misery in her eyes. Was it true? Could the Oneness be broken?

And if it could, what other disaster might follow?

Thursday passed in a blur of the same thoughts, the same worries. She didn’t call the boys and they didn’t call her. A brightish morning gave way to rain again at night, another night like the one when Reese had come, and drove Diane’s mood deep into clouds and recollections she didn’t want.

It stopped raining just half an hour or so before dawn, and Diane fell asleep at about the same time. When the sun rose she woke just enough to pull the curtains tight shut against it, and so it was nearly noon before she found herself in the kitchen, frying bacon, wondering how the boys were getting on and what their visitor meant and was going to mean.

It was always possible Reese would turn out to belong somewhere, to be heading somewhere, and she would just thank her rescuers and leave. But Diane knew it wasn’t going to happen that way. Chris wouldn’t allow it; he was too protective—he would insist on seeing her home, making sure she wasn’t really just going off to try to harm herself again. And Tyler was too perceptive; he would see through her if she lied.

Besides, she didn’t belong anywhere. Nowhere except with the Oneness, and if she was telling the truth, she could not go back to them.

And if she had somewhere to go, she would have gone yesterday already.

Diane sighed and leaned against the stove. She didn’t really want to think about all this. She wanted the world to go on turning like it had for so many years, with nothing wrong, nothing calamitous about to come down on their heads.

But she knew better. Calamity is always hanging over our heads—all of us, every day. Something is always wrong. And she of all people knew that.

“Maybe it’s all a mistake,” she said out loud.

A knock on the back door startled her so badly she nearly knocked the frying pan off the stove. She switched the gas off and took the three steps across the tiny kitchen to the door.

“Yes?”

She didn’t know the man standing on her doorstep, though she’d seen him around the village. He was tall, dark-skinned, trim. But she knew the woman standing beside him. Short, wiry, Diane’s own age. Piercing grey eyes and white strands of hair highlighting darker locks. Diane closed her eyes for the barest of instants and saw the kitchen again, the family, Douglas hiding them, keeping them away from the mob hunting them down. A man and his wife, four children, and this woman, the man’s sister.

“Hello, Mary,” Diane said.

“I’m sorry to come without any warning,” Mary answered. “This is Richard.” She hesitated. “May we come in?”

Diane opened the door all the way and stood against it without a word. Mary nodded and led the way into the kitchen. The three of them took up the whole room. Their presence was oppressive—bigger than the people who created it. But Diane did not ask them to come further into the house.

“We need your help,” Mary said.

Diane cleared her throat. “I thought you had eyes?”

“We do.” It was Richard who answered. “That’s why we’ve come. Her name is April. She went missing yesterday morning.”

“Missing?” Diane choked.

Mary’s expression was earnest and direct. “She went out on a job, one she said would only take her a couple of hours. She was supposed to be back in time for breakfast. She didn’t come. We got worried and started looking for her yesterday evening.”

“Seems a little rash to say she’s missing,” Diane said, knowing full well that Mary was never rash—that the Oneness did and said very little in haste. “Maybe she just wanted to get away.”

“Things have been dark lately,” Richard said. “We are all careful to stay connected and report back in time. April wasn’t careless. We’ve looked all over town and can’t find her.”

Diane cleared her throat. For a fleeting second she had hoped that the boys’ Reese and this April might be one and the same—but no, this girl had only been missing since yesterday morning, and Reese had left her cell, wherever it was, at least sixteen hours earlier—enough time for her to cast herself off the cliffs.

“So you’re here because …”

“We wondered if you’ve seen anything,” Mary said.

Diane started to shake her head. “Do you know a girl called Reese?”

Richard frowned. “No.”

“Never mind,” Diane said. “I don’t think I can help you.” She knew what she
should
tell them—that she’d seen a demon two nights ago, in a flash of vision, and seen its bat-body dead on the floor, slain by a girl who said she was an exile from the Oneness and should not even have the power to wield a sword. A girl who claimed the impossible and yet believed it so deeply she had tried to take her own life only a few hours before. But she couldn’t say it. The girl was involved with Chris, and Chris was her son, and Chris didn’t need to become mixed up with these people—to become enamoured with them like Douglas had.

Like
she
had.

So she said only, “I haven’t seen anything. Surely one of your own can help you.”

“Diane …” Mary reached out to lay a comforting hand on Diane’s shoulder, but it wasn’t comforting. Anything but. Never, never had this woman brought comfort—not her and not her people.

The Oneness held the world together. Diane knew that, and she treated them with respect because of it. Respect, but not welcome.

And yet, she had to know.

“What do you think happened to her … April?”

“We don’t know,” Mary answered. “But we’re worried. Something feels very wrong. You feel it too, even if you won’t admit it.”

Diane bristled a little. “Is there any possibility—any chance she might just have left?”

Richard frowned. “What do you mean?”