The Possessed

Chapter 5

 
"Let's just get out of California as fast as possible," Gabriel said. Rob wouldn't agree.
"We ought to think about this before we just start driving blindly. We're looking for a beach, right? There are a lot of beaches in California - "
"But we know it's not in California," Kait interrupted. "Anna and I know that. We're sure." In front of her, Anna was nodding.
"And we've got to get out of this state," Gabriel said. "This is where the cops will be looking for us.
Once we're in Oregon we can relax a little."
Kaitlyn was afraid Rob would argue just for the sake of arguing with Gabriel - she wasn't sure how things stood between them just now - but he just shrugged and said, "Okay, then," peaceably.
Lewis rattled the map. "The fastest way is to go up Interstate 5," he said. "I'll tell you how to get there.
We still won't make it to Oregon before dark."
"We can change drivers every few hours," Kaitlyn said. "Oh, and everybody, try and look like you're on a field trip or something, at least until one o'clock or so. People might think it's strange for a bunch of teenagers to be riding around in a van during school hours."
The country kept changing as they drove. At first it was beige and flat, with scrubby grass and an occasional gray-purple bush beside the road. As they got farther north it became more hilly, with trees that were either bare or dusty green. Kait watched it all with an artist's eye and eventually picked up her sketchpad.
It felt like a long while since she'd had time to draw. It had only been twenty-four hours, since yesterday's art studio class - but her entire life of yesterday felt years away. The oill pastels spread smoothly onto the fine-toothed paper, and Kaitlyn felt herself relax. She needed this.
She blocked out the shape of the distant hills with side strokes of the pastel stick, catching an impression of them before the scene changed. That's what she liked about pastels - you could work fast on a burst of inspiration. She filled the hills in with loose, vigorous strokes, and the picture was done in minutes.
That was practice. Now turn the page. Reach for cool colors - pale blue and icy mauve. Maybe acid green and blue-purple, too.
A picture was coming alive under her fingers without her conscious intent.
Kaitlyn was used to letting her fingers go at moments like this, while her mind simply drifted. Right now her mind had drifted to thoughts of Gabriel.
She was going to have to talk with him, and soon. As soon as she could find any privacy. Something serious was wrong. She had to find out what it was...
With a shock Kaitlyn recognized what she'd drawn on the sketch pad.
Gabriel. Not the stark black-and-white portrait she'd always imagined, but a form arising out of a dense network of colored lines. It was unmistakably Gabriel...
... and in the center of his forehead, blazing with cold blue brilliance, was a third eye.
It seemed to glare at her balefully, and Kaitlyn suddenly felt faint. As if she were about to fall into the picture.
She jerked back, and the sensation disappeared, but chills ran down her neck.
Stop it, she told herself. There was nothing strange about a picture of the third eye. Gabriel was psychic, wasn't he? And this just a metaphor showing he was. She'd drawn a picture of herself with a third eye once.
The reassurances didn't reassure. Kaitlyn knew in her bones that the drawing foretold something evil.
Kait, what's wrong?
Rob's voice in her head. Kaitlyn looked up from the maze of colors to see that everyone was looking at her. Gabriel had turned around in the front, and Lewis and Anna were looking over the back of their seat. She could see Rob's worried eyes in the rearview mirror.
While she'd been drawing she'd forgotten about the web, hadn't even felt the presence of the others.
And she could tell from their confusion that they hadn't heard her thoughts, either, just gotten a general sense that she was upset.
Interesting, one part of her mind said. So drawing is a way to screen my thoughts. Or maybe it's just concentrating.
Meanwhile, the rest of her mind was answering Rob.
It's nothing. Just a drawing.
She felt Rob's alarm. "A precognition?" he said aloud.
"No - I don't know." It was horribly impossible to lie in the web. "Whatever it is, I don't want to talk about it now."
She didn't, either. Not with Gabriel sitting there hearing every word, not with Lewis and Anna looking on. Gabriel would be furious at the violation of his privacy, and the others might panic. No, Kaitlyn had to talk to him alone about this first.
She could feel frustration from Rob - he could tell she was hiding something, but not what. Anna's clear dark eyes were questioning.
Time to change the subject. "Shouldn't we stop and switch drivers?" she said.
Lewis grinned. "Let's wait a couple of exits and stop at the Olive Pit. There was a sign back there advertising free samples."
"This must be olive country," Kait said, glad of a distraction. "I keep seeing groves of olive trees."
She kept talking until they stopped, and then there was the complexity of selecting olive samples - chili olives and Cajun olives and Texas olives and Deep South olives - and by the time they all got back into the van everyone seemed to have forgotten their questions.
Gabriel drove. Rob sat in the rear with Kaitlyn, who leaned against him.
"You all right?" he said, too softly for the others to hear.
Kaitlyn nodded, avoiding his golden eyes. She didn't want to have any secrets from Rob, but she was afraid to upset the precarious balance between him and Gabriel.
"Just tired," she said. She didn't feel like drawing anymore, not even when a huge and beautiful mountain appeared before them in the distance. Its single peak was white with snow, accented by black ridges of rock.
"Mount Shasta," Lewis said.
They passed rolling hills and crossed riverbeds, mostly dry. The motion and the sound of the van was lulling. Kait's head drooped onto Rob's shoulder and her eyes shut.
She woke with a start and a shiver. How strange - it was cold suddenly. Icy cold, as if she'd stepped into a restaurant freezer.
She looked around, dazed with sleep. Mount Shasta was behind them, glowing like a huge watermelon jewel in the sunset. The sky was murky mauve.
In the front bench seat Anna's black head was lifting. "Gabriel, turn down the air conditioning!" she pleaded.
"It's not on."
"But it's cold," Kait said and was caught by another shiver.
Shivering himself, Rob wrapped his arms around her. "It sure is," he said. "We haven't gone that far north - is it usually like this, Lewis?"
Lewis didn't answer. Kait saw Anna look at him curiously, and at the same time realized she could sense nothing from him in the web.
"Is he asleep?" she asked Anna.
"His eyes are open."
Kaitlyn's heart rate seemed to quicken. Lewis? she thought, sending the word to him.
Nothing.
"What's happening?" she said aloud as Rob let go of her to lean around the front seat and look into Lewis's face. She had a bad feeling - a very bad feeling. Something was strange. The air wasn't just cold, it was full of electricity. And there was a smell, a smell like a sewer drain.
And a sound. Kaitlyn heard it suddenly over the soft roar of the van's engine. A sharp, sweet sound, one note, as if somebody had run a wet finger around the rim of a crystal goblet. It hung in the air.
"What the hell is going on?" Rob demanded. He was shaking Lewis. At the same moment Gabriel snarled from the front, "What are you guys doing back there?"
"We're not doing anything," Kait called - just as Lewis jumped up and dived for the empty bucket seat beside Gabriel.
His hands grabbed and beat at the air. His body slammed into Gabriel, who cursed and wrestled with the steering wheel. The van swerved.
"Get out of here! Get him out of here!" Gabriel shouted. "I can't see - "
Rob twisted in behind Lewis, trying to pull him back. The van kept swerving and skidding as Lewis's elbows hit Gabriel. Kaitlyn clung to the seat in front of her, frozen.
"Come on!" Rob yelled. Lewis, come on back! There's nothing there!
Lewis kept on fighting, and then all at once he went limp, and like a cork popping out of a bottle, he shot backward with Rob. They both crashed into Anna, who yelped. Then they fell in a tangle on the floor.
"Hey - what's the matter? You getting fresh or something?" Lewis said. "Let go of me."
It was an ordinary, complaining voice. Lewis was disentangling himself, looking mildly bewildered but absolutely normal.
Rob sat up and stared at him.
Gabriel had finally gotten the van on course again. He shot a glare over his shoulder. "You crazy jerk,"
he said. "What'd you think you were doing?"
"Me? I wasn't doing anything. Rob was grabbing me." Lewis looked around at all of them, his round face honestly puzzled.
"Lewis - you really don't remember?" Kaitlyn asked. She could tell by his expression, by his presence in the web that he didn't. "You jumped up and started beating on something in that seat," she said, nodding.
"Only there was nothing there."
"Oh..." A sort of light was dawning on Lewis's face. Then his expression turned sheepish. "I guess - I was dreaming, you know? I don't really remember the dream, but I thought I saw somebody sitting there.
A kind of whitish shape - a person. And I knew I had to get it..." His voice trailed off. He gave another look around and hunched his shoulders apologetically.
"A dream," Gabriel said in disgust. "Next time keep your dreams to yourself."
A dream? Kaitlyn thought. No. It didn't make sense; it couldn't be the whole explanation. Why should Lewis suddenly start having dreams that made him attack things? And what about the cold - it had disappeared as quickly as it had come; the air felt fine now. And the drain smell, and that sound...
We're all tired, Anna's gentle voice said in her head, reminding her that she hadn't been trying to shield her thoughts. Not just tired but exhausted. And we've been under so much stress -  it could come out in strange ways.
"We could all have been dreaming a little," Rob said with a laugh.
"I suppose," Kaitlyn said. She tried to put any further doubts out of her mind - for now, at least. Lewis obviously believed his own story, and Anna and Rob believed him because he believed it. There was no point in harping on it.
We'll wait and see what happens, she told herself. She settled back on the seat, and Rob returned to sit by her again. The light was fading in a way that made her want to check if she was wearing sunglasses.
To the west and in front of them were huge flaming hot cherry clouds.
"Should we stop?" Rob asked, peering at his watch in the dimness.
Gabriel turned the van's headlights on. "We're still in California. We can stop when we get to Oregon."
The sky went gray and then black. Ghost trucks with dazzling headlights came and went on the other side of the highway. It was nearly eight o'clock when they reached a sign saying welcome to Oregon.
They drove on until they found a rest stop and then ate dinner sitting on the cool dark grass outside the van. Dinner was peanut butter sandwiches and one apple apiece, drawn from the grocery bag Tony had given them. Dessert was some cherry cough drops Lewis had found in the glove compartment and the last of the Cajun olive samples.
"We can stay here tonight," Rob said, looking around the almost-deserted rest stop. There were few cars on the highway nearby. "Nobody will bother us."
Kait found she'd brought toothpaste but no toothbrush. In the women's rest room she rubbed her teeth with a corner of a cotton shirt she'd packed. They all wanted to go to bed early.
"But how?" Kaitlyn said when she got back, confronted at last with the logistics of five of them sleeping in the van. Suddenly there no longer seemed to be acres of room. "Where do we all fit?"
"The rear seat reclines," Rob said. He and Lewis had the back of the van open and were fiddling with the bench seats. "See, it folds back into a flat bed. That's room for two people there. Somebody else can sleep on the other bench seat, and then the two bucket seats in front recline."
"I'll take one of those," Lewis said. "Unless somebody wants to share the back... ?" He looked from Anna to Kait hopefully.
"The girls can have the back," Rob said.
Anna's dark eyes were laughing. "Oh, no... I think you and Kaitlyn should have the back. I'll sleep on the other bench."
"And I'll sleep outside," Gabriel said shortly, leaning in from the front and yanking a sleeping bag out of the pile.
Daggers and broken glass, that was what Kait felt from him through the web. She and Rob hadn't even agreed yet, although she knew they would. She liked to sleep close to Rob, it felt safe. And she knew Rob liked to have her close, because then he didn't worry about her as much.
"It's just convenience," she began, but Gabriel cut her off with a look. He seemed pale and tense under the van's interior lights.
"Look, I don't think it's such a good idea, sleeping outside," Rob said in a mild voice. Gabriel gave him the look, too.
"I can take care of myself," he said and showed his teeth.
He left the van. Kaitlyn helped Rob spread out blankets automatically, trying to screen her thoughts from the others. She still hadn't had a chance to speak to Gabriel privately. She was going to have to make a chance, and soon.
Sleeping in the back of the van was cramped and a little stuffy - like sleeping in a compartment on a train, Kaitlyn guessed. But she didn't really mind being crowded in with Rob. He was warm and nice to hang on to. Comfortingly solid.
It was the first time they had been alone together - and Kaitlyn was so tired her eyelids felt like lead weights. There were no golden sparks at his touch now, just a steady shining light that seemed to pour reassurance into her.
"I love you," she murmured sleepily, and they kissed. A sweet kiss that made her cling to him afterward.
I love you, Rob thought back. His thought carried the essence of him with it - pure Rob. Warm as sunlight, with an underlying hint of strength that made Kait think of lions basking in the savanna. Rob had a fine stubborn temper of his own, but he cared too much about other people to let it rule him.
And he didn't care who heard him say he loved her. A vocal whisper would have been much more private than telepathy. Distantly Kaitlyn could feel tolerant amusement laced with envy from Lewis and peaceful approval from Anna - but from outside the van, from Gabriel, a wave of dark repudiation.
Bitterness. An anger that frightened her.
He feels that he's been cheated of something, she thought, even as she clung harder to Rob. But that's not right; I never led him on...
We've got to find a way to break this link, Rob said stiffly. It's all right when you want it, but having people spying on your thoughts when you don't want -
"Rob, don't annoy him," Kait whispered. Rob was broadcasting loud and clear, and Gabriel was getting angrier by the minute. The two of them together were like flint and iron - sparking off each other at every opportunity.
I've said from the beginning that we've got to get rid of it, Gabriel said from outside. And I know of one certain way, at least.
He meant for one of them to die. It had come to that, Gabriel threatening them again, acting as if he hated them all.
"Leave it alone," Kaitlyn hissed before Rob could answer. "Oh, please, Rob, just leave it; I'm so tired."
To her surprise she felt on the verge of tears.
Rob immediately gave up the argument, mentally turning his back on Gabriel. We'll find a way to break it -  another way, he promised Kaitlyn. The people in the white house will help us. And if they don't, I'll find a way.
"Yes," Kaitlyn murmured, her eyes shutting. Rob was holding her close, and she believed him, as she'd believed in him from the beginning. She couldn't help it; Rob made you believe.
"Go to sleep, Kait," he whispered, and Kaitlyn sank into the darkness fearlessly.
As long as you're with me I'm not afraid, she thought.
The last thing she heard before sleep was a distant whisper from Anna. "I wonder if we'll dream again?"
Gabriel twisted inside the sleeping bag. There was nothing but grass underneath him, but he felt as if he were lying on roots - or bones.
Ghoulish thought. The bones of the dead beneath him. Maybe the bones of his personal dead, the ones he'd dispatched himself. That would be poetic justice, at least.
Though he wouldn't have admitted it to anyone, Gabriel believed in justice.
Not that he regretted having killed the guy in Stockton. The one who'd been ready to shoot him over the five crumpled dollar bills in his jeans pocket. He was quite happy to have sent that particular home boy to hell.
But that had been his second murder. The first had been unintentional - the product of what happened when a strong mind came in contact with a weaker one. He'd been strong, and Iris - sweet Iris - had been weak. Fragile as a little white mouse, delicate as a flower. Her life energy had poured into him as if one of her arteries had been cut. And he hadn't been able to stop it.
Not until it was over and she was lying limp and motionless in his arms. Her face blue-white. Her lips parted.
Gabriel found that he was lying rigid, staring straight up into the endless darkness of the night sky. His hands were clenched into fists and he was sweating.
I'd die if it would bring her back, he thought with sudden clarity. I'd change places with her. I belong in hell with home boy, but Iris belongs here.
It was strange, but he couldn't really remember her face anymore. He could remember loving her, but not what she'd looked like alive, except that her gaze had been wide-open and defenseless, like a deer's.
And he couldn't take her place. Things weren't that simple in the universe; he wasn't going to get off that easy. No, his part was to lie here on grass that felt like bones and think about the new murders, the ones that he was going to commit, inevitably, in the future.
There wasn't any other way for him.
The girl in Oakland - that scrawny ratbag with the tattoo - he hadn't killed her, quite. He'd left her in an alley with her life force almost drained, but still flowing. She'd live.
But tonight... the need was stronger. Gabriel hadn't expected that. He'd been feeling it for hours, the parched, cracked-earth sensation, and by now it was almost unbearable. It was all he could do not to rip into Kessler, who was a constant beacon of energy, radiating it like a lighthouse or one of those stars that flared regularly. The temptation was almost unendurable, especially when Kessler was being annoying, which was almost always.
No. He couldn't touch any of his own group. Aside from the fact that it would blow his secret, it was - impolite. Impolitic. Uncivil.
And wrong, the distant part of his mind whispered.
Shut up, Gabriel told it.
He was out of his sleeping bag in one lithe twist.
Since Rob the Wonder Boy was off limits, he would have to go hunting elsewhere. Through the web, Gabriel could feel the deep sleep of his mind-mates; through the windows of the van he saw nothing.
Nobody was going to miss him.
He looked around under the stars for someone to quench his thirst.