Bloom Page 18

  Marius frowned. “Young people,” he said. “So serious. Always jumping to wrong conclusions.” He gestured for Colton to follow him away from the entrance. “Come.”

  They walked between the trees and ascended a large hill. At the base of the hill that sloped away from the trees was a small pond and an old willow tree, its branches tickling the surface of the water.

  The old woman sat against the trunk of the tree, her eyes closed peacefully and a faint smile on her face, as if she were in the middle of a pleasant dream.

  “Elena,” said Marius, nodding toward the woman.

  “I’m sorry,” said Colton quietly.

  “She was very nice woman. Strong and stubborn, but nice.”

  “Did Bernam kill her?”

  “He took her power. We cannot live without it. Yes, he killed her.”

  Colton looked down at his body. His skin was ashen and his knees shook with the strain to keep him upright.

  Marius must have seen the look of fear on his face.

  “You are strong, too,” he said. “Don’t give up hope.”

  “What are you going to with…with…” Colton swallowed thickly and tried to force himself to finish the sentence, but could not.

  “We will bury her next to the tree, the way she would have wanted.”

  “This place is beautiful,” said Colton.

  “What does your mother look like?”

  Colton turned to Marius, surprised by the abrupt question.

  “She left when I was nine.” He tried to remember her face, but was ashamed to realize that the memory of her appearance was blurry—she existed in his mind as a grouping of emotions and sensations, the strongest of which was happiness that he felt when he spent time with her. “In the few pictures I kept that my father didn’t burn, she had light brown hair, shoulder-length, and light brown eyes. She was thin. There was a small mole on her left temple, like a beauty mark.”

  Marius’s frown deepened.

  “What is it?” asked Colton.

  “Bernam was right and wrong about your mother,” said Marius.

  “What do you mean?”

  “She is here, with us, but she is not a prisoner. She stays with us because that is what she wants—because it is too dangerous for her to be anywhere else.”

  Colton stood atop the hill, speechless, his mind a torrent of different thoughts. He took a deep breath and tried to think clearly.

  “Do you want to see her?” asked Marius.

  Colton expected to answer immediately, but instead the word yes caught in his throat. What if she’s different? he thought. What if she doesn’t remember me?

  “You don’t have to if you don’t want.”

  Marius turned and walked down the hill, toward the doors.

  “Yes,” said Colton suddenly.

  My power is gone, and I’m going to die, he thought. His body shuddered and he tried to force himself to accept that inevitable outcome. I’m going to die.

  He took a deep breath. “Yes, I want to see her.”

  “Very well,” said Marius. “But it’s too dangerous to go alone.”

  32

  Colton and Marius met a tall, thin man near a large metal box that looked like a sealed refrigerator. In the wall next to the box was a weathered steel door with heavy hinges and a chrome steering-wheel for a handle.

  Marius scowled at the tall man and orange light flared briefly in his eyes, then faded. He sighed. “Okay,” he said, turning to Colton. “Dormer go inside with you. I’ll help Corva with the body—nyet!” He slapped his forehead. “I mean, I’ll help her with Elena.” He walked away, shaking his head and whispering curses at himself in Russian.

  Dormer watched him go and blinked quickly. His movements were jerky and erratic, like a bird’s. He sniffed quickly and wiped his nose, and his hands shook slightly as he reached for the box. He twisted a handle on the front and the side panels slid down to reveal a compact cube of machinery. He flipped a small switch next to a thick pipe and the box shook to life like a car engine.

  “What are you doing?” asked Colton.

  Dormer reached into the machine and grabbed the pipe firmly with both hands. The machine’s quick, powerful chugging instantly slowed to a struggling wum…wum…wum as the motor fought to stay alive.

  “Since your ability was taken,” said Dormer, “I have to go in with you.” His tense shoulders visibly relaxed as he let go of the pipe and switched off the machine.

  “I want to see her alone.”

  “That would be unwise.”

  “I don’t care.”

  Dormer smiled without humor and punched a sequence of numbers into an electronic wall panel next to the large door. With a loud, metal CLUNK, something in the wall released and the door swung inward on oversized hinges.

  Dormer gestured dramatically at the doorway, offering a small bow as his hand swept through the air. “After you.”

  The next room was shaped like a shoebox, its longer end stretching away from the dome. The space was empty except for an old aluminum table and chair that were pushed to one side. A dim fluorescent light in the ceiling cast a sickly green glow over the room. It buzzed loudly and flickered as Colton entered the room.

  There were no windows or any other kind of decoration in the room. On the far wall was a single, ordinary wooden door with a dull brass handle.

  A pneumatic PHOOMP came from behind and Colton turned quickly. Dormer spun the polished handle on the closed door and tapped another sequence of numbers on the interior wall panel.

  “Why did you do that?” asked Colton.

  “House rules,” said Dormer. “Hope you’re not claustrophobic.”

  Colton looked at the wooden door at the far end of the room and sensed it was moving farther away from him. His stomach lurched and his legs shook.

  “Do you feel it?” asked Dormer.

  Colton stumbled to the wall and leaned against it heavily. “What—what’s happening?” The small amount of energy he had in his body was slowly being drained away.

  “It’s your mother. She no longer has control of her abilities. She is a living black hole, pulling in everything around her, unable to stop her body’s energy accumulation.”

  “She’s a Conduit?” asked Colton. His chest tightened and his breaths were quick and shallow. “Is that why you keep her locked up?”

  “She is here because she asked me to help,” said Dormer. “She came to us three years ago, after she—”

  He stopped.

  “After she what?” said Colton.

  Dormer shook his head. “She will tell you, if that is what she wants.” He walked over to Colton and rested a hand on his shoulder.

  Colton immediately felt warmth flow over his skin and sink down to his bones. His legs stopped shaking and his breathing slowly returned to normal. He stood up straight as Dormer removed his hand.

  “That should last you a few minutes,” said Dormer. “I’ll be out here if something happens.”

  Colton looked down at his hands. “Thank you,” he said.

  Dormer gave a slight nod, then pulled the aluminum chair away from the table and sat down. He crossed his arms and closed his eyes.

  Colton approached the wooden door hesitantly. He reached for the handle, and just before his palm touched the brass knob, Dormer spoke.

  “If it gets to the point where you can’t shout for help,” he said, “try to pound on the door. I’ll assume that means things went poorly.”

  Colton swallowed thickly and grabbed the doorknob. He pulled open the door and stepped into a small room.

  His mother sat on a bed to one side, reading a book. She looked up at him and smiled. Her skin glowed with soft white light that lit the room evenly—there were no lamps or flashlights; no machines in the room of any kind.

  Thick pipes ran along the ceiling and hummed softly. It was a cozy room, filled with books and quilts. A wooden writing desk stood next to the bed, piled high with loose, hand-scribbled pages.

>   Colton’s mother closed the book she was reading and set it next to her on the bed.

  She looks too old, thought Colton. His father was forty-five years old, and Colton knew that his mother was a couple of years younger. The woman sitting on the bed looked to be at least sixty. Small wrinkles lined the skin of her once-pretty face. Her hair was grey and pulled back in a tight ponytail. Her body was smaller than Colton remembered—she looked to be no more than five feet tall, but in some of her older pictures she was nearly the same height as Colton’s father, who was almost six feet tall.

  “Colton,” she said quietly, her eyes glowing brighter with soft white light.

  “Mom?”

  He walked farther into the room and the door closed behind him. She scooted to the edge of the bed, her feet dangling a foot off the floor, and patted the mattress next to her.

  Colton walked over and sat, never once taking his eyes from her. Despite the changes, she was the same woman he remembered seeing for the last time nine years ago. He reached up to touch her cheek but she leaned away.

  “No,” she said.

  “Mom, what happened?” asked Colton, his eyes searching her face. “Why did you leave?”

  “Oh, Colton,” she said, looking away.

  “I missed you. Dad missed you!” Colton felt anger building within him—the desire to unload years of blame on the woman who was supposed to have loved him and raised him for his entire childhood and not just a small portion of it. “You don’t know what he’s like now—how he treated me after you left—how he treated himself…”

  Tears formed in her eyes and floated into the air as tiny bubbles. They broke apart and dissolved like powder in water.

  “I had to leave,” she said. “They would have killed all of us.”

  “Who?”

  She sighed. “Colton, can’t we talk about something else? I want to know about you—about your life.”

  “No, Mom, we can’t! Who did this to you?”

  “I did it to myself.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nine years ago, a man named Bernam came to our house and asked me to join him and his group. He was trying to get as many of our kind together as he could. I told him I wanted to live a normal life and that I didn’t want to be involved with anything other than you and your father. Bernam said there was a huge battle coming and that he needed all the soldiers he could get. That was the word that made up my mind. Soldiers. He meant to start a war. When I tried to force him to leave, he said he would kill everyone in my family unless I agreed to join him.”

  “Dad thinks you left because you fell in love with someone else.”

  “I knew he would think so,” she said, shaking her head, “but it isn’t true. I love your father, and I love you. I left so both of you could be safe.”

  “It ruined his life,” said Colton. “And mine.”

  “What should I have done, let them kill all of us?”

  Colton stood and turned away from her. “No, just—I don’t know.” He looked around the small room and read the titles of some of the books piled high against the wall. “So you went with Bernam.”

  “For a time. He only wanted to use me—and the rest of the men and women he had threatened into joining him—to help him wipe out his enemies. He was the bad guy. At that time, I had only just started to learn the true potential of my own ability after ignoring it for so long. He helped me to become stronger. But, in the end, I wasn’t strong enough to defeat him.”

  Colton felt the warmth in his body draining quickly. He turned and looked at his mother. The soft light glowing from her skin shimmered and grew brighter.

  “What happened?” asked Colton.

  “I joined with a few others to try and take him down. I was the strongest Conduit, so one of the others offered me their ability in addition to my own. This was before most of us knew that two abilities were not compatible in one person. They are separate entities that cannot mix.”

  “So you took your friend’s power.”

  She shook her head. “Only a Void can take away, as well as help another to do it. But Cons can give their power to another, even if they were born without a power of their own.”

  Colton thought of Reece.

  “My friend gave me his ability,” she continued, “and I went to confront Bernam. I was already starting to feel it going wrong inside me, but I mistook it for new power.” She reached out and touched a pipe that ran down along the wall from the ceiling. The light emanating from her body grew brighter. “Bernam nearly killed me.”

  “Why didn’t he?” asked Colton.

  “Because he thought it would be more fun to watch me suffer. He didn’t know why I was in so much pain, but he could tell that something was very wrong. He thought it was something he had done to me on his own. I was helpless. By the time Bernam left and one of my friends arrived and told me how to get rid of my extra ability, it was too late. From that point on, I had no control over my power. I can’t turn it off, Colton. That is why I came here instead of going back home to you and your father. Dormer built this room for me,” she said. “Electricity runs through those pipes constantly. The only thing I have been able to do successfully is to give off excess energy in the form of light.”

  She held up one of her hands and the light surrounding it intensified.

  “But that’s not all,” she said quietly. “My mind isn’t the same. There are moments when I think I’m back home in Pittsburgh. I’ll see myself standing in your bedroom, looking down at you while you sleep. Then, suddenly, I am back in this room, screaming because I can’t do anything else. It gets worse every day.” She shook her head. “Soon there will be nothing left of me.”

  Colton sat down next to her. “Come home with me, Mom,” he said. “I can make a room like this for you. You don’t have to stay here anymore.” A tear rolled down his cheek.

  “My darling boy,” she said, smiling. “I’m afraid it’s too late. I’m so tired, Colton. I’ve only held on this long because I hoped against hope that I would be able to see you again. And here you are. Look how strong you are.”

  “I’m not strong at all,” said Colton. He didn’t want to tell her his life was slowly fading.

  “You can do something to help me,” she said, sitting up straight. “Dormer told me that Bernam took away your ability.”

  Colton nodded. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Don’t fight,” she said.

  She reached for him and pulled him close, hugging him fiercely. Colton closed his eyes as the light on her skin grew painfully bright.

  “I love you, Colton,” she whispered.

  Like an explosion in a vacuum, energy flared within his chest and quickly disappeared. He felt it disperse throughout his body and settle in his bones as a light vibration.

  The light in the room blinked out and his mother collapsed onto the bed.

  “Mom!” he shouted. Colton lifted her up and held her in his arms.

  The door burst open and Dormer stood silhouetted by the green light beyond. “What happened?!”

  “I don’t know!” said Colton. “Help her!”

  Dormer hurried to the bed and Colton leaned his mother slowly into Dormer’s arms. Her skin no longer glowed with soft white light. Dormer rested his palm on her forehead, then checked her pulse.

  “No,” he said quietly.

  “How do I give it back?” demanded Colton.

  “What?”

  “She gave me her ability! How do I give it back?”

  “I—I don’t know how to explain it,” said Dormer. “It’s something you learn on your own.”

  “There has to be a way,” said Colton. “She said someone told her how to get rid of it!”

  Dormer shook his head, stunned into silence.

  “I just got her back,” said Colton. He reached out and pulled her back to him, cradling her body gently.

  Dormer stood and walked slowly from the room, one hand covering his mouth.

&nbs
p; Colton rested his palm against his mother’s cheek and tried to force the power she had given him back into her body. He clenched his teeth and imagined the energy flowing from his hand and onto her skin. He felt it moving within him, tracing along his bones like crawling snakes, but he could not command it to leave.

  He brushed a loose strand of white hair from her face and kissed her forehead. One of his tears fell onto her cheek and followed a shallow wrinkle.

  “I just got you back,” he whispered.

  Colton closed his eyes and wept.

  33

  Haven stood in the center of the training room and closed her eyes.

  Her target was a crater the size of a dinner plate in the concrete wall at the other end of the long room. She pictured it in her mind and held it there, suspended in space. Slowly, the image of the blue ball of energy grew in the darkness. The plate faded as the ball of swirling plasma consumed it and continued to increase in size.

  With great effort, Haven imagined herself reaching into the core of the ball, past the molten outer layers that parted around her arms as she moved closer to the smooth, spherical center. She rested her palms against the cool surface of the core and commanded the energy to flow into her body.

  It swirled over her arms and around her shoulders, sinking into her skin and gathering along her spine. The energy nested there, moving up and down her body like water shifting in a moving container.

  Haven opened her eyes and saw blue light.

  Through the ropes of brilliant energy that crossed her vision, the crater in the far wall looked like a psychedelic spiderweb. She held both of her arms straight out in front of her, palms open toward the wall, and pushed.

  A huge bubble of blue plasma swelled out from her palms and exploded with a fat BLIP. The room was temporarily illuminated as if by a high-powered camera flash. The bubble sent small glops of molten energy spinning into the air all around her. Most of it dissipated before it hit the floor but some of the pieces burned small, smoking holes into the concrete by her feet.