CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
They say death comes in threes. The first death? Veronica, an innocent bystander killed at the hand of Tavion. A death explained as a car crash. The second? Jan, reported as killed when her plane crashed during her flight back home to Houston. But I knew Tavion had killed her, too. The third? That was going to be me. The target of a war between ancient energy beings known as Transhumans. Protected by the Pure and hunted by the Tainted for eight lifetimes, with this lifetime being my last.
Even though Farrell had said the end was not yet written, I knew the odds were not in my favor. Somehow I needed to change that, but how? It was one day before Christmas Eve. Mom and Dad had said they’d be home, but weren’t yet. When I pressed Farrell for their whereabouts, he said they’d tell me when they got home. The secrecy killed me, but he insisted it was necessary for my safety. How could I argue with that?
Hardly sleeping, and barely eating, I decided enough was enough. When I burst into Farrell’s room to tell him we needed to formulate a plan, he tried to convince me to wait for my parents, but I wouldn’t let him. After a heated argument, mostly from me, he agreed.
A few key things were working in our favor: my blood harmed Tavion, Abigail was an ally, so somehow the journal of Julian Huxley contained answers. Mom and Dad had the book, but we had the rest of his writings in Houston at the Rice University library.
"I’m sick of waiting around," I said. "And I know you are too, Farrell. I can tell. I say we go back to Rice. We need to read as much as we can on Julian Huxley."
Farrell hesitated. He paced the room for a minute before he answered. "Okay, let’s go."
We got to Rice just before ten and found the campus quiet and empty. All the students were home, getting ready for Christmas—a time for family, food, and presents. I envied them because for me Christmas was now a time of death, fear, and despair. With each passing day, I just wanted it to be over.
Farrell and I walked through the tall sand-colored stone archway that took us from the front of the school to the quad. As we walked, Farrell’s hand brushed against mine. I thought of all the times Farrell filled my mind. I knew there had to have been something between us in our past lives.
"So you really don’t remember any of our past lives?" I asked, hoping that maybe he did.
He slowed his pace. "No, none of us do."
I stopped, and he did, too. I got in front of him and looked up at his perfectly sculptured face. Every mark from his confrontation with Tavion had disappeared. He had explained it as a power to heal. My wounds, however, remained, my hands still stiff and achy.
"Come on," he said. "Let’s get what we need and get out of here."
He was right, we needed to hurry. We started for the library when a crackle of lightning with gray sparks filled the air right in front of us. I shielded my eyes. When I lowered them, there stood the same Tracker as before—tall, lean, and dressed in black. The one who had found Farrell and me the first time we had come to Rice.
Farrell gathered his white and yellow-hued aura in his hands, ready to strike the Tracker.
The Tracker quickly raised his arms. "I have a message for the Marked One."
My stomach tightened, my heart raced. Farrell lowered his arms. The energy in his hands faded.
"Speak, Tracker," Farrell said.
The Tracker relaxed his stance and stepped closer. He stood eye to eye with Farrell. They had almost the exact same build and features. The main difference was their hair color. While Farrell’s was blonde, the Tracker’s was black.
"Tavion sends word." The Tracker raised his hand. His gray mist trickled out until it formed a thin oval shaped mass in front of us. Almost like a gray window, but instead of reflecting us, it showed an image. It was fuzzy at first, and then I made out my mom and dad. They were in a cave. Mom laid on the ground, her eyes closed. Dad paced back and forth, his clothes tattered and burned, his face cut and bleeding. My stomach lurched while panic seized me. I grabbed Farrell’s arm. Tavion had my parents!
The Tracker's eyes fixed on Farrell. "Tavion will release Caris and Stone upon surrender of the Marked One. Said surrender and exchange to occur in three days."
For a minute there, I didn't know who the Tracker was referring to since I wasn't used to hearing my parents called by their first names.
The Tracker's eyes landed on me. "If the Marked One refuses, Caris and Stone will be extinguished and the Marked One hunted and killed. You have thirty seconds to decide."
Terror soared through my veins. My heart exploded with fear. My eyes glued on my mom and dad. I couldn’t let anything happen to them, I just couldn’t. Farrell turned his back on the Tracker and brought his face close to mine. "Dominique, I am charged with your safety. Your parents know this. They would not want you to sacrifice yourself for them. Not ever. The balance of good and evil, the future of this world, depends on your survival."
My gaze stayed on my parents. Farrell placed his hands my shoulders. "Do you hear me? You must refuse. You must not surrender."
Yes, I heard him, but I couldn’t accept what he had to say. There was no way I could give up my parents like that. Especially since all their lives, for nine lifetimes now, they had protected me. Besides, if I surrendered, I would have three days to come up with something. There had to be another way.
My pulse quickened. I didn’t even know I was biting the inside of my mouth until I tasted blood. "I surrender!"
Farrell’s green eyes widened with disbelief, his hands still locked on my shoulders. "What have you done?" he whispered. He released me and stared down at the ground. Shock covered his face. Before turning to face the Tracker, he erased the disappointment and stood tall. "Tell Tavion we’ll be ready for surrender in three days at the place of our choosing when the moon is at its peak." He lifted his hand. His aura trickled out of his fingers. "And no harm shall befall Caris or Stone. If it does, I will find you and kill you."
The Tracker narrowed his eyes at Farrell. Then he looked at me. "The Marked One has spoken. In three days the Marked One will exchange her life for her parents." The misty image of my parents disappeared, and so did the Tracker.
An uncomfortable and thick silence engulfed Farrell and me. He had to be pissed, but he didn’t say anything. Instead, he continued on to the library.
"Hey," I said. "Don’t you want to talk about my surrender? Come up with a way to get out of it. I mean, you’re my protector and all, right?"
He kept a fast pace. "There’s no getting out of a surrender."
I gulped. "Okay, well, what then? There must be something we can do. We have three days." Instead of answering me, he continued walking. I ran past him and stopped in his path. "Farrell! Stop! I’m trying to talk to you!"
He rubbed his face and sat on a nearby cement bench. "You are very hard to protect, Dominique, did you know that?"
This whole time I hadn't thought about Farrell and what it must be like to protect me. I had touched those cards that first exposed my energy to the Tainted. I played the Ouija board and had almost gotten myself and Infiniti killed. Then, as if one near-death experience wasn't enough, I went back for the board that Veronica ended up having and used in my house, which later led to her death and almost mine and Trent's. Now I had surrendered to the enemy.
"I’m sorry, Farrell. I don’t mean to be difficult."
He ran his fingers through his hair. "I know. But here we are with just three days before you surrender yourself to the Tainted, and we have no idea how to defeat Tavion."
So I wouldn’t make it to my eighteenth birthday after all. Not even New Year’s Eve. "Listen, Farrell, there are benefits to knowing when I’m supposed to die. I mean, now there’s no more waiting on edge, worrying all day, sleepless nights. When you think of it, for once we have the advantage. We know when Tavion will strike. We can even pick the place. That’s gotta count for something, right?"
"We shall see," Farrell said.
Farrell and I slipped into the library the same way as
before, by using his energy to dissolve the glass wall. Once inside, we scanned the area to make sure we were alone. The air smelled like new carpet. It was overpowering at first, but gradually I got used to it. The white walls were plain, save for a few books that opened and hung like pieces of art, books I hadn’t noticed before. There was even a stack of books on two walls made to look like trees.
"Back here," Farrell said.
We zig-zagged our way through the long white cubicle style desks. As we did, I noticed the books on the walls had shadowy figures on them—birds. The artwork on each book had birds, and the books themselves looked like they were flying from one tree to the other. I swallowed hard. It couldn’t be a coincidence. I searched the floor, thinking I might see a white feather, but didn’t.
When we got to the back room where my mom and dad had been, we found it empty. I grabbed my hair and began twisting, panic taking me over again. "This is where they were right?"
Farrell brought my hand down from my hair. "Let’s check the reference desk. Maybe the school moved the documents."
Two clear signs hung above a long white desk with two computers: REFERENCE. Farrell turned the computer on. I thought for sure there’d be a password or something on there, but Farrell managed to go directly to his search. I wondered if maybe his energy source had bypassed any online security. He typed: "Julian Huxley Documents". Pages and pages of documents filled the screen. The status of each? Checked out.
"Oh, hell," I said, tingling shivers erupting inside me. "Somebody knew we were coming. Right? I mean, why else would all the documents be gone?"
"Maybe," he said. He typed: "Julian Huxley Transhumanism." Up popped the paper Julian Huxley wrote in 1956. I was surprised to see that it wasn’t that long. Farrell printed it. I leaned over Farrell and typed: "Julian Huxley Biography."
I read out loud, "Julian Huxley was born in England in 1887. A brilliant scientist with a keen mind for discovery, he often had serious and debilitating attacks of depression. He taught at Oxford but left in 1913 to teach biology at the new Rice Institute in Houston, Texas. He stayed at Rice from 1913 until 1916. He left and returned to Europe to take part in WWI."
Huxley’s bio went on and on with his teachings, his writings, and his associations, when something caught my interest. "Hey, check this out." I pointed at the screen. "In 1929 he left his wife and returned to the United States. He left no account of his life at that time, but eventually returned to England in 1931."
Farrell pushed his chair back. "That’s during the time of his journal, right?"
"Yeah," I said. "The journal was dated 1930."
Farrell muttered. "1930—that’s one year before he returned to England." He picked up the paper on Transhumanism. "This paper is dated 1957. So whatever happened here in the States directly influenced the writing of this paper."
"Abigail," I said. "He found her here and studied her. She’s the key." The quiet library echoed the stillness. "We either need that journal, or we need to somehow communicate with Abigail," I said. "If we don’t, we lose."
Jan had seen Abigail in a school back in Arizona. I had seen her in my house, in my parents’ study. She was a Transhuman, an ancient energy being just like Farrell and my parents, and somehow Huxley had found her in the United States. "Farrell, when Abigail brought me Huxley’s journal, you said that when Huxley wrote about transhumanism, he was actually writing about you guys, right?"
"Yes, that’s right."
"And he knew about Transhumans because he found Abigail and he studied her, right?"
"Yes."
"But you also said that somehow she had died. Well, how exactly does someone like Abigail die?"
"Energy, once created, can never be destroyed. It can only be relocated or transformed."
"What?" I asked. "Relocated? Transformed? So she’s not dead?"
He grabbed a piece of paper. "Think of it this way," he said. "This is a regular sheet of paper that people use every day." He closed his hand tight around the paper. A glow came from inside his hand. The smell of burning paper filled the air. Black smoke trickled through his fingers. When he opened his hand, the paper had turned to black clumps. "See, it’s still the same paper, but it’s been transformed to ash."
"So she’s ash?" I thought of people who get cremated when they die, and I shivered.
"No, not exactly. In her case, as in all Transhumans, the only way we die is to get relocated, or absorbed by another energy source."
"Hold on," I said. "Absorbed?" Even though I asked, I knew exactly what he meant. Tavion’s hand had dissolved into my chest when he had me trapped in that vapor bubble in the red desert. He called it taking my energy source. I could still feel the heat searing my insides.
"Yes—absorbed, taken. One energy source taking another. That’s what Tavion was doing to you in that red desert. He was draining your energy, your soul. And that’s what he’ll do to you when you turn yourself over in three days." Farrell paused for a minute. He leaned forward in his chair. "Dominique, I don’t think you get it. When he absorbs your energy source, Tavion wins. The Pures will lose. And mankind will never be the same.”
Farrell and my parents had told me that my death would bring about some sort of destruction, but I didn’t realize exactly what kind until now. Tavion’s hollow, pale, and creepy face flashed before my eyes.
My death would turn the world into hell.