Earthbound e-1 Read online

  “Maybe Quinn is trying to speak through you and that painting was, like, some kind of supernatural gateway.”

  I raise my eyebrow at him. “He picked some random, totally broken teenage girl to communicate through?”

  “Not random,” Benson insists. “Another Earthbound. Like him. Maybe that’s the only way it works.”

  I consider that and it makes a horrible sense. I admit, I don’t want to be an Earthbound—whatever that really means. I don’t want to be special. But if Quinn chose me, there must be something I can do for him. “I think we need to go to the house, Quinn’s house, the one from the newspaper article.”

  “Problem. We don’t know where—”

  “I do,” I whisper, realization dawning, “I know where it is.”

  Benson peers at the clock on the dash, his skepticism unconcealed. “It’s too late to go now, and honestly, I don’t think you’re in any condition to do anything.”

  I nod wearily. “Tomorrow, maybe?”

  His brow furrows in concentration. “If you want.”

  A contented drowsiness is starting to overtake me. “I do. I have to—to figure this out.”

  “I know,” Benson says with a loud sigh, and it strikes me as an odd answer, but he’s probably exhausted too.

  “We should find a place to sleep; I’m going to pass out soon.”

  A smile crosses his face now. “Your wish is my command.” He checks the rearview, then pulls out. “Go to sleep,” he says as he scans the sparse traffic. “It’ll take about twenty minutes.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Just sleep. It’s a surprise.”

  I feel like I’ve scarcely closed my eyes before Benson is nudging me.

  “We’re here.”

  I don’t understand why he’s waking me up just to let me know it’s time to sleep until my fatigue-heavy eyes catch the light.

  I’ve never been so happy to see a simple Holiday Inn. “Are we staying here?” I ask, practically pushing my nose up against the window.

  “No,” Benson says. “I just drove you here to tempt you with a real shower. We can leave now.”

  This time, his shoulder gets a punch, but my brain has a death grip on the words real shower.

  I grab my backpack—feeling a little guilty that I’m the only one who has a clean change of clothes—and scan the items in the trunk, trying to decide what’s most important. “The journals,” I finally decide. “I need to bring them in. I have to read them.” My brain is still fuzzy, and that’s as far as I get before Benson scoops them up.

  “Let’s just get inside. I don’t want anyone to see you.”

  “It’ll be fine,” I say, as though the words would make it so. “Where are we?”

  “Freeport. It’s about sixty miles from Camden, but it’s a town we haven’t been to yet. I’m trying to keep us safe,” he finishes in a mumble.

  “You’re doing great,” I say, glad he’s being careful. Whoever’s following us is smart and persistent, and as much as I generally admire both those qualities, I like them much less when they’re working to make me … dead. As we cross the parking lot, I step a little closer to Benson, letting my shoulder brush his. “You’re my Superman.” I reach up and tap his glasses. “Specs and all.”

  “I’m no hero,” he says softly.

  Feeling bold, I reach down and slip my hand into his instead, entwining our fingers. “You’re my hero.”

  He squeezes my hand and unlocks the door, and I try not to feel fluttery about the fact that I’m going into a hotel room. Alone. With Benson.

  “Why don’t you go ahead and shower,” Benson says, hovering in the doorway, probably having just come to the same realization I did. “I need to go sell some more of this gold.”

  “Now?” I ask, the panic of him leaving way worse than the similar panic of him staying.

  “I’d rather go at night when the car is less likely to be recognized,” he says, looking down at the carpet. “I saw a pawnshop on the way into town—had one of those ‘we buy gold’ signs. If I get it done tonight, tomorrow we can just take off.”

  His shyness is oddly emboldening, and I step forward and rest my hands on his hips. “I wish we could just take off now.”

  “Me too,” he says, barely loud enough to hear. He hesitates and then draws his head a little closer to mine. “Are you sure you’ll be okay on your own for an hour or so?” he whispers.

  What does okay mean, really? It’s not the same definition I had yesterday, or last week, or last month. For the moment, okay means I’m alive. “Sure,” I say, but I know I can’t sound very convincing.

  Benson tugs me closer. Our foreheads touch, and for a while I think that’s all he’s going to do. Then he traces one finger down my jawbone and lifts my chin. The kiss is barely more than a brush of his lips, but it’s like liquid comfort pouring into my belly and spreading through my limbs.

  “Take a shower. And it’s okay if you go to sleep—I don’t know how long I’ll be.”

  I nod, knowing I’ll never be able to sleep until he’s back and I’m sure he’s safe. “Be careful.”

  “Don’t open the door for anyone,” he warns, even though he knows I don’t need it.

  “Only you,” I promise, holding eye contact until the door closes between us. “Only you,” I repeat, setting the whispered words free.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Five minutes later I step into a scalding shower and sigh in sheer pleasure. After lathering twice I knead my sore neck, then look down to take stock of my sad, battered body. The pink scars on my right side from the plane crash—small lines where two broken ribs pierced through my skin, a staple-marked scar on my thigh where they put the worst of my broken bones back together with a metal plate, even my comparatively tiny trach and feeding tube scars—are so familiar now that it’s hard to remember what I looked like without them.

  I shake my head, thinking of Elizabeth’s declaration that I’m an Earthbound. This body, riddled with scars and aches, should be proof enough that she’s wrong. Mistaken. A supernatural being couldn’t be so broken. If not for my gift, I wouldn’t believe her at all.

  And now I have new marks.

  An enormous bruise is purpling on my left hip from where I fell running from Quinn last night. The edges are just starting to turn yellow and the middle resembles an eggplant. My knees and hands are both scraped from the pavement earlier today and still sting a little from the vigorous scrubbing I gave them a few minutes ago.

  Visually seeking out a vague throbbing on my upper arm, I see the shadow of forming bruises where Benson’s fingers dug in when he dragged me away from the car crash.

  When he rescued me.

  The coming bruise makes me chuckle and shake my head. I won’t tell him. He’d feel awful. Benson would never hurt me. Not intentionally.

  Sometimes I think he’s the only one.

  My mom.

  My dad.

  But they’re gone.

  A small surge of guilt shoots through me as I realize I’ve hardly thought of my parents the last few days. Slowly, so slowly I didn’t realize it until just this moment, Benson has slipped into their place. The person I can trust with everything. Not just life-altering secrets like my powers and the people trying to kill me, but silly ones. The time in fourth grade when I laughed so hard I wet my pants, the baby bird that fell out of its nest that I tried to save … and how I cried when it inevitably died. The kind you only share with true intimates.

  Family.

  I straighten in surprise as the word races about in my brain and then settles.

  But why shouldn’t Benson have become my family?

  I think of Elizabeth’s warnings against him yet again and a prickle of anger makes my face heat. No one, no one, has proved as loyal as Benson. I would take him over the whole lot of them.

  I stand under the hot spray until my whole body is pink, then take my time getting dressed, first blow-drying my short hair with the loud hotel bl
ow dryer, then pulling on a simple baby tee and yoga capris and finally slathering some hotel lotion over my scratched arms and hands. It all feels like such a luxury.

  I’m too keyed up to sleep. I try watching TV, but all the stations are talking about another breakout of the mysterious virus—this time in a small town just north of the Canadian border.

  A one hundred percent fatality rate. It makes my stomach churn.

  Jay’s words echo through my head: My work, we’ve found connections between the Reduciates and the virus, and if you walk away, I’m not sure I—

  What was he going to say next? For the first time, I almost wish I’d stayed. I wish I’d listened. Could something this devastating, this random, be the work of an organization that had nothing better to do than hunt down an eighteen-year-old girl? It seemed impossible.

  There’s a doctor on the news now, outlining the symptoms of the virus, the possible vectors of infection. I close my eyes, not wanting to hear.

  I’m so sick of bad news.

  I click off the television and turn to look at the two ancient journals. I haven’t had a chance to even skim through Rebecca’s journal since this morning, so I flip to the end so I can check out this mystery language.

  The handwriting is the same, but Benson’s right: it’s impossible to read.

  I turn to Quinn’s much shorter diary instead.

  Quinn’s journal doesn’t go into depth, but the brief descriptions are enough. If Quinn is to be believed, these two groups—brotherhoods, he calls them—have had their fingers in everything from the French Revolution to the Knights Templar to the councils of Nicaea. History changing.

  History making.

  And I should have realized how ubiquitous the triangle has been as a symbol throughout history. The Templars, the Masons, the Egyptians; hell, it’s on our dollar bills. The Earthbound—and through them, these brotherhoods—are etched across the history of civilization.

  If I was scared before, I’m terrified now.

  No wonder they seem to always be a step ahead of us. They’ve had thousands of years of practice.

  When I hear the door unlock, my heart leaps and races. Benson pokes his head in tentatively—probably to check if I’m sleeping—before slipping in.

  I glance at the clock and am shocked to see that it’s been two hours since he left. I scarcely noticed the time passing.

  He comes in and shuts the door behind him without a word. He stands with his back to me for a long time, and when he finally turns, I lift both of my hands to my mouth with a gasp. His eye is purpling in what’s sure to be a major shiner tomorrow, and a scrape on his upper cheekbone has a smear of blood across it. His hair is mussed and the knuckles on his right hand are bleeding through a napkin.

  “Holy crap, Benson, what happened to you?” I rush to him, but he puts out a warning hand and I pull up short.

  “Please don’t,” he says, and his voice is brittle, almost to the breaking point. “I think my ribs are bruised.”

  “What the hell happened?”

  “Get your stuff, we have to go.”

  “What do you mean go?”

  “Not far, but we aren’t safe here. There’s another hotel across the street.”

  “But—”

  “Please Tavia, there’s no time!”

  The desperation in his voice shocks me into action. I circle the room, grabbing everything I can see and throwing it into my backpack. I hold my loaded bag against my chest and huddle beneath my coat as Benson opens the door again. Chilly air rushes in and swirls around my bare calves and sockless feet shoved into tennis shoes, but when Benson turns to ask if I’m ready to run, I nod.

  We sprint through the snow, struggling not to slip on the iced pavement as we cross from one hotel parking lot into another. Benson leads the way around to the far side of a long wing of rooms and then reaches into his back pocket. “Stand over there, in front of me,” he says, pointing.

  I do, confused, but understand when I see Benson working on the old dead bolt with his tiny lock picks.

  “You didn’t book us a room?” I whisper.

  “Do you want to be dead by morning?” he retorts, in a completely uncharacteristic display of impatience.

  That’s when I understand how scared he is. “No,” I answer softly. “Thank you.”

  The door opens moments later and Benson gestures me inside. He drops my backpack as he flips on the light, revealing what could have been a mirror image of the room we were just in. Different colors, one less lamp, utterly interchangeable.

  The silence feels thick between us.

  “What happened to you?” I finally ask, hating the suspicion that he ran into my trouble. My mind flashes back to Sunglasses Guy, who apparently managed to track us up to the library. And we really haven’t been that careful this evening. Not careful enough.

  “Can we not talk about it?” Benson asks, and he sounds so weary that I almost relent, but I can’t just not know.

  “The quick and dirty basics,” I say.

  “I went to a pawnshop like I told you and turned in the gold for cash, and I was so focused on how much I got us that I was sloppy. Didn’t watch out. It was dark and I … I was easy to sneak up on.”

  “Oh no,” I say, knowing what’s coming.

  Benson turns away and starts emptying his pockets onto the bedside table, including a thick fold of twenties. Or are those hundreds? He continues wearily. “So a guy jumps out and puts a gun to my head and demands to know where you are.”

  “Where I am?” I was right; my stomach feels sick. “What did you do?”

  Without turning he lifts his wrapped fist. “I punched him in the teeth.” He chuckles mirthlessly. “He didn’t like that very much,” he says, gesturing to his blackening eye.

  I swallow hard, wondering if he broke any bones in his hand or just the skin. “How’d you get away?”

  “I got in a couple good hits, gun fell in the snow, and I managed to get in the car. He didn’t shoot. Probably didn’t want to kill me before he found out where you are.”

  “Benson.” My fingers skim up his back, over his damp coat.

  “Just don’t,” he says. “Please.”

  “Okay,” I whisper, not understanding.

  “You’re clean,” he mumbles in halfhearted explanation. “And I totally reek. You don’t want to touch me.”

  “I—” But what am I supposed to say? The truth is that I want to touch him so badly I can hardly keep myself still. But that won’t help anything.

  “I should shower,” he says, and I turn, trying to give him the privacy he’s so blatantly asking for, but after a few seconds I hear muffled cursing. I turn and see that he’s managed to slide his peacoat off but is struggling to unbutton his shirt with his injured hand.

  “Let me help.” I rush up and Benson jumps away like a skittish rabbit. He looks almost as weary as I do—as though he’s aged five years in the last week.

  I pause and study him for a moment with my artist’s eyes. I wonder if I look that way too, if that’s what had Reese so concerned. Does it show in my face the way it does in Benson’s? If so, I can’t hide it.

  “Benson,” I whisper, soft but firm. He settles down, but his eyes still have that wild look. I move slowly, unfastening all the buttons down the front first, revealing his white T-shirt beneath. Then I unroll the sleeve on his left arm; the right one’s already ripped up to his elbow.

  “I can take it from here,” he says, but I fix him with a firm glare and he remains docile as I carefully peel the wet fabric away and lift the tail of his undershirt to look.

  “Oh, Benson,” I whisper. His entire torso is covered with purpling bruises that look about as bad as the one on my hip. “Turn,” I say, but he grabs the bottom of his shirt and plants his feet firmly without a word.

  I give up. It doesn’t matter. If his back is anything like his chest, I’m not sure I want to see it. “Are you sure none of your ribs are broken?” I say, shocked at the beating he to
ok.

  Because he wouldn’t betray me.

  “I’m not sure of anything,” he says in a low, raspy voice.

  Slowly, I reach for his chin and turn his face from one side to the other, examining. He closes his eyes, and I bite my lip at the split skin on his cheekbone and a scratch I didn’t see at first that goes up into his hairline, probably from the bent earpiece of his glasses. “Ben,” I murmur, and from beneath his closed lids a single tear slips out, tracing down his cheek. Stepping on my toes, I lift myself without leaning on him and kiss it away, the salt bitter on my lips, and I seethe inside at the person who would do this to my Benson.

  I crouch and realize just how much this has broken Benson’s spirit when he sits on the bed without even being told and lets me untie his shoes. He protests briefly when I start to pull off his socks, but he doesn’t put up much of a fight.

  His breath sucks in as I reach for his pants. “Just the button,” I say from where I’m bent close to his shoulder, “then you can shower.”

  He nods, and after I carefully unfasten his pants, I take what looks like an unbruised elbow and help him up. He stifles a groan and shuffles into the bathroom.

  I stare at the closed door for a long time. Guilt boils inside me, filling me with acrid shame. Benson wouldn’t be here, wouldn’t be hurting, if it weren’t for me. There’s no way to argue my way out of it; this is my fault.

  I lie helplessly in the bed listening through the thin walls as Benson gets in, then out of the shower. The hotel blow-dryer turns on and runs and runs, and I wonder if he’s actually doing something with it or just trying to cover up the sound of his soft noises of pain. Almost half an hour passes before Benson opens the door, freshly showered and looking a little better.

  Not quite so defeated.

  “You’re still awake?” he asks, averting his gaze, hiding behind the door so only his head and shoulder are visible. His water-darkened hair is wet and freshly combed, but not styled, making him look younger than usual.

  “Waiting for you,” I say from the bed, wondering where I found the courage. I twist my fingers together, not sure if I’m more drunk on fear or anticipation.