Kaitlyn froze, her legs suddenly refusing to move. Rob moved up beside her, put an arm around her, urging her on. "Anna, come here," he said quietly, and Anna obeyed without a word. Lewis crowded up close.
The man across the street had stopped, but he was still watching them.
"Just go on walking," Rob said. "Don't look back." There was calm conviction in his voice, and the arm around Kait's shoulders was hard with muscle.
Gabriel turned around to sneer. "What's the matter, Kessler? Scared?"
I'm scared, Kaitlyn told him, before Rob could respond. She could feel Rob's anger - he and Gabriel were spoiling for a fight. I'm scared of this place, and I don't want to stay here all night.
"Well, why didn't you say so?" Gabriel nodded down the street. "Let's go there, where the factories are.
We'll find some place to hole up where the cops won't find us."
They crossed railroad tracks, passed huge warehouses and yards full of trucks. Kaitlyn kept glancing behind her nervously, but the only sign of life here was the white smoke billowing out of the Granny Goose factory's smokestacks.
"Here," Gabriel said abruptly. It was a vacant lot, fenced and barb-wired like everything else around here. A sign inside read:
SALE LEASE 4+ ACRES
APPROX. 180,000 SQ. FEET
PACIFIC AMERICAN GROUP
Gabriel was standing by a gate in the fence, and Kaitlyn saw that the barbed wire on top of the gate was squashed flat. "Give me a sweater or something," he said. Kaitlyn took off her ski jacket, and Gabriel spread it over the flattened barbed wire.
"Now climb."
In another minute they were inside the lot, and Kait had her jacket back - now dotted with perforations.
She didn't care; all she wanted to do was huddle down like a duckling in some place where nothing could get her.
The lot was a good place. A huge rampart of dirt clods screened the middle of it off from the street.
Kaitlyn stumbled over to a corner where two walls of dirt met and collapsed against it. The adrenaline that had fueled her for the last eight or nine hours had run out, leaving every muscle like jelly.
"I'm so tired," she whispered.
"We all are," Rob said, sitting beside her. "Come on, Gabriel, get down before somebody sees you.
You're half dead."
Right, Kaitlyn thought. Gabriel had been exhausted before knocking out the policeman, and now he was almost shaking with fatigue.
He stayed on his feet for a moment, just to prove that he wasn't listening to Rob, then sat down. He sat across from the rest of them, keeping his distance.
Lewis and Anna, though, scooted in close to Kaitlyn. She shut her eyes and leaned back, glad of their closeness, and of Rob. Rob's warm, solid body seemed to radiate protectiveness. He won't let anyone hurt me, she thought foggily.
No, I won't, Rob's voice in her mind said, and she felt immersed in gold. An amber glow that warmed her and even fed her, somehow, pouring radiance into her. Like cuddling up with a sun, she thought.
I'm so tired...
She opened her eyes. "Are we going to sleep here?"
"I think we'd better," Rob said, his voice dragging. "But maybe one of us should stay up - you know, to keep watch in case somebody comes."
"I'll watch," Gabriel said briefly.
"No." Kaitlyn was appalled. "You need sleep more than any of us..."
Not sleep. The thought was so fleeting, so faint, that Kaitlyn wasn't sure if she'd really heard it or not.
Gabriel was the best at screening his thoughts from the rest of them. Right now Kaitlyn could sense nothing from him in the web, except that he was drained. And that he was adamant.
"Go ahead, Gabriel, suit yourself," Rob was saying grimly.
Kaitlyn was too tired to argue with either of them. She'd never imagined that she could sleep outdoors like this, sitting on the bare ground with nothing over her head. But it had been the longest night of her life - and the worst - and the dirt wall behind her felt amazingly comfortable. Anna was pressed up against her on one side and Rob on the other. The March night was mild and her ski jacket kept her warm. She felt - almost safe.
Kaitlyn's eyes closed.
Now I know what it's like to be homeless, she thought. Uprooted, out in the world, adrift. Heck, I am homeless.
"What city are we in?" she mumbled, feeling somehow that this was important.
"Oakland, I guess," Lewis muttered back. "Hear the planes? We must be near the airport."
Kaitlyn could hear a plane, and crickets, and distant traffic - but they all seemed to be fading into a featureless hum. In a few moments she stopped thinking and was dreaming instead.
Gabriel waited until all four of them were asleep - fast asleep - and then he stood up.
He supposed he was putting them in danger by leaving. Well, he couldn't help it - and if Kessler couldn't protect his girl, that was his own lookout.
It had become painfully obvious that Kaitlyn was Kessler's girl now. Fine. Gabriel didn't want her anyway. He should be grateful to Rob the Golden Boy for saving him - because a girl like that could trap you, could get under your skin and change you. And this particular girl, with hair like autumn fire and skin like cream and the eyes of a witch, had already shown that she wanted to change him.
Almost succeeded, too, Gabriel thought as he picked his way through the scraggly brush poking its way between dirt clods. She'd gotten him in a state to accept help from Kessler, of all people.
Never again.
Gabriel reached the fence and boosted himself over it, clearing the barbed wire. When he came down, his knees almost buckled.
He was weak. Weak in a way he'd never been before. And there was a feeling inside him - a hunger. A burned-out feeling, as if a fire had passed over him, leaving him blackened and parched. Like cracked earth thirsty for summer rain.
He'd never felt like this before. And part of him, a small part that sat back from the rest of his mind and sometimes whispered judgment, said that there was something dangerous about feeling this way.
Something wrong.
Ignore it, Gabriel thought. He made his legs move down the uneven sidewalk, tightening muscles so they wouldn't shake. He wasn't afraid of this kind of neighborhood - it was his native environment - but he knew better than to show weakness here. The weak got picked off in a place like this.
He was looking for someone else weak.
The whispering part of his mind twinged at that.
Ignore it, Gabriel thought again.
The liquor store was up ahead. Beside it was a long brick wall decorated with the remains of tattered posters and notices. Men stood against the wall, or sat on crates in front of it.
Men - and one woman. Not a beauty. She was skin and bones, with hollow eyes and unhealthy hair. A tattoo of a unicorn covered the calf of one leg.
Now there was irony. A unicorn, the symbol of innocence, virginity.
Better this scrawny ratbag than the innocent witch back in the lot, he thought, and flashed his most brilliant, disturbing smile at nothing.
That thought demolished the last of his hesitation. It had to be someone. He'd rather it be this bit of human garbage than Kaitlyn.
The burned, parched feeling was overwhelming him. He was a scorching void, an empty black hole. A starving wolf.
The woman turned toward him. She looked startled for a moment, then smiled in appreciation, her eyes on his face.
Think I'm handsome? Good, that makes it easy, Gabriel thought, smiling back.
He put his hand on her shoulder.
The ocean hissed and spat among the rocks. The sky was an uneasy color, more metallic violet or grayed lavender than real gray, Kaitlyn thought. She was standing on a narrow rocky peninsula. On either side of her was the ocean. Ahead the peninsula stretched out like a bony finger into the water.
A strange place. A strange and lonely place...
"Oh, no. Here again?" Lewis said from just behind her.
Kait turned to see him - and Rob and Anna, as well. She smiled. The first time she'd found them in her dream she'd been confused and almost angry. Now she didn't mind; she was glad of the company.
"At least it's not so cold this time," Anna said. She looked as if she fit into this wild place where nature seemed to rule without human interference. The wind blew her long dark hair behind her.
"No, and we should be glad to be here," Rob said, his voice full of suppressed excitement. He was scanning the horizon alertly. "This is where we're going, remember - if we can find it."
"No," Kait said. " That's where we're going." She pointed across the water to a distant shore where a cliff rose, black with thick-growing trees. Among the trees, shining in the eerie light, was a single white house.
It was the white house Kaitlyn had seen in a vision at the Institute. The one in the photograph shown to her by a lynx-eyed man with caramel-colored skin. She knew nothing about the man except that he was an enemy of Mr. Zetes, and nothing about the house except that it was connected to the man.
"But it's our only chance," she said aloud. The others were looking at her, and she went on, "We don't know who they are, but they're the only people who even have a chance to help us against Mr. Z. We don't have any choice but to try and find them."
"And maybe they can help us with" - Lewis changed to telepathic speech in midsentence - this thing.
Maybe they'll know how to break the link.
Anna spoke quietly. "You know what the research says. One of us has to die."
"Maybe they can find some way around that."
Kaitlyn said nothing, but she knew they all felt the same way. The web that tied them together had brought them very close, and there were some wonderful things about it. But all the same, in the back of her mind there was always the pounding insistence that it had to be broken. They couldn't live the rest of their lives like this, welded together this way. They couldn't...
"We'll find the answers when we get there," Rob said. "Meanwhile, we'd better look around. Examine everything about this place. There must be some clue as to where it is."
"Let's walk up there," Kait suggested, nodding toward the end of the peninsula. "I'd like to get as close to that house as possible."
They kept a close watch as they walked. "Same old ocean," Lewis said. "And back there" - he gestured behind them - "same old beach with trees. If I had my camera we could get a photo to compare to other things. Like, you know, pictures in books or travel brochures."