A scream filled the air, and when the thing took two more steps into the foyer, I realized that the sound was coming from me, but I couldn’t stop. As the zombie shuffled toward the center of the house, I saw what was strapped around its waist, half a dozen cylinders taped in place, a cord leading to one of its hands.
Bombs.
And then I understood.
Prentiss had somehow found this place-this humble house in which Rattler planned to begin building his empire-and he meant to burn it to the ground. It made a crazy kind of sense: Prentiss couldn’t compete with Rattler’s powers, his visions, his ability to summon and manipulate the Banished. He couldn’t force Rattler to work for him or to provide fodder for his experiments; he’d already tried to recruit him, offered Rattler money to bring the Banished to him.
When that hadn’t worked, he’d sent a team to capture Rattler at his house. Only Rattler had a vision that they were coming. He lay in wait, sly and strong and quick-witted, for Prentiss’s men-and then he killed them all.
So Prentiss had switched tactics. Somehow he knew that Rattler was hiding out in Derek’s father’s house, so he sent in one of his zombies to blow it up. He expected Rattler to see it coming, but he knew that Rattler couldn’t stay on the run forever. He expected Rattler to slip up eventually, and when that day came, Prentiss would be there to capture him and force him to do his work.
But Prentiss didn’t know everything about the visions. They couldn’t be predicted or controlled. They showed danger and destruction and pain and loss before it happened, but Rattler didn’t care about the shack and he didn’t care about Derek, not really. And more important, his mind, his entire being, was focused on Prairie right now.
Any visions Rattler had would be of her.
Kaz was trying to drag me toward the back door, my feet slipping along the splintered wood, but when I understood what was going to happen next, I grabbed his hand and ran. I glanced back once to see the thing that had been a boy with surfer hair stop and hold the cord up in front of him, his eyes unfocused and uncaring, his grotesque face indifferent, and then Kaz threw open the screen door and pushed me out into the bright morning and I stumbled on the leaning steps and Kaz was dragging me across a weedy yard with a clothesline strung between a tree and a shed that was missing a door and the last thing I noticed as he threw me to the ground next to the shed was the sweet smell of soil and mold and a pile of flowerpots mounded in the shade.
And then the world exploded.
21
THE FLASH CAME FIRST, a white-yellow blink, followed a second later by a boom that shook the earth and blasted through my skull. I felt Kaz frantically trying to cover me with his body but I pushed him off, twisting to see the little house burst, shingles flying and foundations splintering, a cloud of yellow flame blooming from within. A piece of window sash sailed into the yard and crashed inches from where we lay, its jagged edge impaling a fat hosta plant. Glass splintered from the window and rained down along with charred and smoking debris. My head echoed with the force of the blast, and though I could see Kaz’s lips moving as he screamed at me, all I could hear was a dull roar.
I let him pull me to my feet and only when I stood did I notice that he was bleeding. Bright, pulsing blood was literally pouring from his forehead and he stumbled, never letting go of my hand, and touched his skull, his fingers coming away glistening red. He swayed and I tried to catch him in my arms, but he staggered backward and we both fell into the shadow of the shed, coming down hard on the packed dirt, his wounded head bouncing on the grass.
“Kaz!” I screamed as his eyes fluttered and rolled up in their sockets. I could hear my own voice but it was as though it was coming from a distance, as though someone else was screaming as I ran my fingers lightly along the jagged tear in Kaz’s skull and felt broken shards of bone.
No. No. This couldn’t be happening, not to Kaz. My knee pressed into something sharp and I realized that debris thrown from the explosion had hit the garden pots and cracked them into dozens of sharp-edged pieces. Whether it was a piece of pot or something from the house that had struck Kaz didn’t matter now. I felt my heart seize with fear and shock but I forced myself to brush Kaz’s hair out of the way and gently check his wound.
The urge to heal grew within me, a longing so powerful it was as if my body itself transformed from flesh into pure need. The words filled my brain, an ageless whispering chant, and they were on my lips and I had to clamp my mouth shut, biting my tongue, to stop myself from saying them. My fingers thrummed with the electric desire to touch Kaz as a Healer, to knit together his broken skull, his torn flesh, to still the blood flow and repair the tissues.
But I couldn’t let myself. Not yet.
Not until I knew if Kaz was too far gone.
Because if I healed him after the life left his body, he would not come back as the boy I loved. He would become just like the thing in the house, the thing that had come on an errand of destruction and now was torn to bits by the blast, shreds of bone and skin whose soul had long since left. If Kaz passed on before I tried to heal him, I would create a zombie.
“Kaz, Kaz,” I screamed. “Can you hear me?”
For long seconds, he lay motionless, his eyes unseeing. My soul shattered with grief at the thought of losing him, of losing the one person besides Prairie who really saw me when he looked at me, who understood who I was and loved me anyway. I felt my eyes fill with tears, hot and stinging, and as I blinked, one fell on his forehead and trailed into his blood and mixed with it. Where it had fallen, the ragged torn skin blurred and skimmed over.
Even my tears were a Healer’s.
I seized Kaz’s hands and squeezed them. “You have to show me now,” I said, choking back my sobs. “If you’re alive, you have to show me, I can’t, I can’t…”
But he said nothing at all, and I couldn’t feel his pulse, couldn’t find the thread of his life, and the unfairness of it nearly cleaved me in two.
I’d come so far only to lose everything. Chub had been stolen from the streets where we’d finally thought he was safe. Prairie had been taken too. And now Kaz lay broken on the hard-packed earth of the miserable town I’d fought so hard to leave.
I couldn’t escape them all on my own, Rattler and Prentiss and his men. I needed Kaz. Together we were more than a couple of scared kids; together our history and our gifts made us strong. I lowered my face to Kaz’s and kissed his bloodied forehead, his parted lips.
And he stirred. Just a little, a tremor, a twitch-but I knew. He was still there.
“Hailey,” he breathed, licking his cracked lips. His eyes flickered and the life came back to them and he sought me with his gaze. I felt him squeeze my hands in return. “Is there… anyone…”
“It’s just me and you, Kaz,” I said. I didn’t want to upset him further, but I knew he needed the truth. “Derek couldn’t have survived that.”
He shook his head with effort. “No… I mean… anyone out front…”
But I had seen enough; now that I knew that Kaz still lived, I gave myself over to the powerful pull of my gift. I let my eyes drift shut and touched my fingertips very gently to the edges of Kaz’s wound, feeling him wince in pain. The voices in my head swelled and rushed through in a current of near-melodic phrases and I spoke the words, murmuring softly while the gift gathered strength and my hands moved of their own volition.