Exile: Book 1 in The Oneness Cycle Read online

  Finally Tyler said, “No renegades?”

  Reese cleared her throat twice. “No. I don’t think so.”

  “Why are they targeting you?”

  I wish I knew! her heart cried. Wasn’t it enough that she had already lost everything that made life worth living? Wasn’t it enough that her identity had been stripped, her love denied, her purpose eternally compromised? She was a wreck, a shell, a castaway destined to be undone by the elements. She was no threat to them anymore. So why attack her?

  A tiny, desperate shred of hope stabbed her heart like shrapnel, and she denied it access.

  That hope, unfulfilled, would destroy her completely.

  The exile was not a mistake. It was real. There on the sand, she closed her eyes and let the pain wash over her full-force again, just to remind herself that there was no hope.

  Why did she bother fighting back, anyway? They could come and kill her right now and she would welcome the freedom death brought.

  Beside her, Tyler rolled onto his hands and knees and shook his shaggy head, damp curls spraying sand like a dog, and then stood and started brushing himself off in preparation for the long walk home.

  This was why she bothered.

  She turned her head and looked up at him. He was about her age, she decided, early twenties—maybe twenty-two, twenty-three. He was not Oneness. Yet he and Chris had risked things for her from the moment they pulled her out of the bay—from the moment they discovered her in the water, in a chance so improbable it could only be a freak accident or a carefully orchestrated plan. She had killed the first demon because it attacked in the cottage and would have gone on to harm her rescuers too. She had killed the second because it was diving straight at Tyler.

  She sighed and squinted up into the blue sky. She was more alone than she had ever thought to be again, and yet in surrender or in fighting, she would be affecting other people. Somehow it didn’t seem fair.

  “Well,” Tyler said, “we’d better get going. If we’re lucky, Chris will have supper on by the time we get back.”

  Reese pulled herself slowly off the ground. Her clothes and hair were damp, and sand clung to every inch of her. She started brushing herself off as she thought over her options. It didn’t take her long to resolve to go. This village was peaceful—storybook-like, really. If Diane Sawyer was anything to judge by, even the Oneness here was at peace. It wasn’t fair to any of them for her to be among them, drawing the attention of the enemy. She needed to leave. She thought of trying to explain this to Chris, or even to say good-bye to him, and grew an unexpected ache in her throat. She would just go, then. Once they hit the streets, she’d say good-bye to Tyler and head out of town. He might try to follow her, but she knew how to keep herself hidden. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time.

  Thoughts of other days, other trips, other missions crept in around the edges of the walls she’d built to keep memories at bay. Other days when she’d found herself part of a tapestry unfolding, what most of the Oneness just called a plan. She wasn’t sure how plans worked when you weren’t part of the Oneness anymore, although others certainly had roles in them; but she was quite sure she didn’t want her part, whatever it was, to unfold here. Better to get as far away as possible and hope to draw the whole tapestry after herself.

  Tyler had already started trudging along the beach, and he called over his shoulder for her to follow. She did, planning ahead as she went. They were going to have to climb up into the base of the cliffs to avoid the incoming tide; the hike didn’t look easy. It might be dusk by the time they were nearing the town, so it wouldn’t be hard to slip away—perhaps even before they hit the streets. It was from a cliff height not far from here that she had jumped only two nights ago, but she barely remembered the paths she had taken then. She shivered a little as she pictured what might happen once she got away from Tyler and struck her own way into the cliffs—she would be vulnerable out there and not hard for the enemy to kill. An image of herself lying wounded or dead in the evening darkness made her shudder. For some reason death did not feel so welcome now.

  * * *

  April winced as she pulled her wrists against an outcrop of rock for the thirtieth time, pulling and sawing at the tape that had been wrapped in multiple layers around them. Her head had calmed to a raging but regular ache, and the pull against her hands and arms helped distract her from it. Besides, she was almost through.

  The last bits of tape snapped through, and she wearily unwound the long strips and dropped them on the rocky floor. Having her hands free would do her no good as far as escape, but it went a long way toward making her more comfortable. Just in case, she wandered to the barred door, grabbed the grid, and shook it. The racket of iron against stone rattled painfully around her head and nearly turned her stomach, but it was secure. Miserably she returned to the spot on the floor where she could lean against a fairly smooth part of the rock wall, and she wondered how long she’d been here. And before that—how long had she been out? It seemed to her it was getting darker in the cave, indicating that it was getting late in the day. Whether it was the same day she’d been kidnapped or another one altogether she had no idea.

  Suddenly realizing she’d been wearing a watch when she went out, she glanced down—it was gone. With a heavy sigh she leaned her head forward, resting it on her knees once again. She felt horribly weak, and for the first time she considered that she was hungry. She still had no idea why she was here, and she wondered if she would ever know. It would not be beyond the enemy to let her starve here . . . wherever “here” was. The thought almost made her smile. The enemy were cowards. More than one of the great saints, the Oneness who were most powerful and effective in the service of the Spirit, had been killed in these offhanded ways so that no one of the enemy would be found with blood on his hands. Maybe this prison had been used for the purpose before. April had no illusions about being a great saint, of course. She lived in a three-person cell in a tiny village overlooking the sea, and her work for the Spirit so far had consisted of little more than befriending lonely people and painting pictures.

  Painting. An idea struck, attractive because it had the potential to distract her from hunger pains that were growing increasingly urgent. She got up and hunted around the cave until she found what she was looking for: a wet patch in the wall, streaked with mud. It was too dark by now to know whether the mud was red or not, but hoping, she dug her hand in and loaded it up with “paint,” trekking across the cave to a wide wall. She stood in thought for a moment and then started a pattern she knew well: a rose vine, the same pattern that was tattooed across her shoulder. She swept a few long lines and then went back, working in the roses, and returned for more mud when she ran out, feeling her way for wet spots along the wall to make sure she was picking up in the right place.

  How much time she spent on the mural she had no idea, but the supply of mud seemed endless. She stopped after she was content that she’d painted a full vine, beginning in one corner of the wall and arching up to the far corner, with offshoots and flowers and buds and thorns, and smiled to herself as she considered that the painting might not be visible at all come light—she had no guarantee that the mud would be coloured enough to show up. And it was quite possible that the painting was a disaster: she was working near blind, with a headache.

  She sat down, feeling a little foolish but strangely happy all the same, and did her best to clean the last of the mud off her hands, using her track pants and the floor. Her hunger hadn’t lessened, but she didn’t feel quite as weak now. She was going to need to find a bathroom—most likely she’d have to designate a corner of the cave for the purpose, although the thought was depressing.

  Her eyes were getting heavy, and although it briefly occurred to her that she might have a concussion and should avoid going to sleep, it also occurred to her that it might not matter if she did.

  * * *

  Tyler arrived back at the cottage shortly after the sun set. It had been a long, hard
scramble up the cliffs to the town—probably not more than a five-mile trek, but it had taken well over four hours. Reese had been a trooper, never once complaining and keeping up a good pace, but they’d had to fight their way through thickets, scramble over a lot of steep rock, and backtrack more than once. When he finally saw the lights of the village winking in the dusk, Tyler felt like a burden had been lifted off his back, and he walked faster as he headed up the road to the cottage. Reese gave him a worn smile as he announced, “Almost home!”

  Despite the steep grade of the road, Tyler picked up his pace. The lights were on in the cottage, and he could smell meat cooking. The smell was better than he would have expected from Chris, and he wondered if Diane had come over. He thought he glimpsed a female form passing in front of one of the windows, confirming the guess. It felt right that she should be there. He wasn’t quite sure about the propriety of Reese staying with him and Chris alone, but somehow he knew Chris wouldn’t want her to go stay with his mother. Troublingly, he was also fairly sure Diane wouldn’t be open to Reese anyway. He didn’t understand the dynamic between mother and son and guest. But, he realized, he cared about Reese, just like he cared about Chris and Diane.

  He reached the front door and started to wipe his boots on the step, turning to say something to his travelling companion. Chris must have seen him coming, because the door opened before Tyler had been there a minute.

  “Where’s Reese?” Chris asked.

  Tyler turned, the words “Right here” on his lips.

  The words died away.

  She was gone.

  * * *

  It was the light that woke April. Light that came softly from behind her like the glow from a lamp. She opened her eyes and smiled sleepily as the mural spread out before her in vivid red on pale rock: the vine and its roses in colour that seemed to pulse with life, branching, arching, looping across the cave wall. Despite the darkness, she had hardly made a mistake.

  Perhaps painting the cave wall wasn’t such a childish thing to do after all.

  Whether because she was so tired or because her head truly was injured, it took April a few minutes to wonder where the light was coming from. As she traced the contours of her painting she slowly became aware of someone sitting next to her. This didn’t bother or frighten her at all—again, perhaps because she really did have a concussion. Maybe she was lapsing into a coma, she thought, and imagining the light.

  Or maybe this was death.

  She turned her head slightly, happy to find that for the first time since she’d awakened in the cave, movement didn’t set her whole skull throbbing.

  A woman she had never seen before was sitting next to her, and the light was emanating not from a lamp or from the dawn outside, but from the woman herself. The light was warm like flames in a hearth. The woman’s eyes were fixed on the mural, and they sat together for some time, just taking it in.

  “It’s really fine work,” the woman said eventually. “And important. You should keep at it, I think.”

  It was morning.

  April was alone, and the cave was getting lighter—light enough that she could make out the lines of the mural, though not in the living relief she had seen it in last night. Her headache was still gone. The cave smelled, but the presence of the painting still made her happier, stronger.

  Had she dreamed the woman?

  Well, she wasn’t dead . . . so the visit hadn’t been death. And unless she was dreaming now, she didn’t think she was in a coma.

  Ignoring the slight cramping in her stomach—too bad that hadn’t gone with the headache—she got to her feet and headed for the wet mud in the back of the cave. “Keep at it,” the woman had said.

  It seemed to April like a fine idea.

  This time she stood for a few minutes in front of the wall, the mud ready in her hands, considering. An image arose: one of the last she’d seen before all this. Bicycle tires whirling, a boy riding as fast as he could straight down the cobblestone street toward the bay. And then another image: the nets and crowded spaces of the fishing shack. And another: Nick’s face. She hoped he was well, that the thugs had not had him in their sights in any way. She felt that he still needed her, and the frustration of being interrupted suddenly hit. So she began to sketch the images out in red paint, this time laying the mud down thickly and then scratching out a sketch with a thin bit of rock, using the light stone beneath to create the lines of the pictures. It would be a prayer, this painting. It was all that she could do here.

  She became aware, as she worked, lost in concentration, that she wasn’t alone. She could see no one, but her spirit sensed what her eyes could not. It was no great surprise.

  She was Oneness, and she was never alone.

  * * *

  Chris had gone pale when Tyler arrived by himself, and he rushed out into the gathering evening. Tyler, bewildered, had stumbled into the house to find that the visitor he had spotted was not Diane; it was a woman he didn’t know, small and weathered, with dark hair silvered in strands and a face that was still powerfully attractive. She introduced herself as Mary and then stood peering around Tyler out the front door, clearly concerned about Chris.

  When Chris came back twenty minutes later, having searched the immediate area as thoroughly as possible in the gloom, Tyler explained, “She was right behind me—we spoke when we got to the town. I have no idea when she left.”

  And Mary made both young men sit down and eat a dinner, which she had cooked, of ham and potatoes and cornbread. Tyler wolfed it down, starving despite himself; Chris ate as much as Tyler did but without apparently noticing it. Mary was remarkably unoffended by this.

  “You are sure she left?” Mary asked Tyler once he had slowed down his eating somewhat. He was surprised at how much stronger eating made him feel. He hadn’t realized just how harrowing the day had been. “She didn’t get lost or . . .”

  “She was right behind me,” Tyler said. “It’s a quiet night—I would have heard if something had happened to her. And we were practically at the base of the road when I talked to her last. She could see the cottage from where we were. She must have gone off alone on purpose.”

  Chris made an inarticulate sound. Tyler didn’t bother to try to interpret it.

  “One thing is certain,” Mary said, “it’s not an accident she came here. Two attacks in a row are not the work of renegades. Something big is happening.”

  The story of the capsizing had come out in bits and pieces in between bites of dinner. Chris pushed his chair back from the table, the legs scraping across the kitchen floor. The room was so tiny that he shoved himself right up against the wall before he could even stretch his legs fully.

  “So explain,” he said. “You must have some idea what’s happening.”

  Mary shook her head, frustration evident in the lines of her face. “If I could have talked to her, I might have learned something. As it is, all we have is a lot of disconnected pieces, and I can’t make them fit. You said your mother has been dreaming . . . well so have I. Dark dreams, prophetic ones. But they don’t say anything clear. They’re just foreboding. We’ve had letters from other cells, warning us that something is wrong, that they too can feel an attack pending. But that’s all they say. We’ve all been sensing it. And now here we are: April’s gone, demons are attacking . . .”

  Her voice trailed away. “I think Reese might be some kind of key. And now she’s gone too.”

  “I think maybe she doesn’t want to be a key,” Tyler said.

  The others looked at him.

  “I mean, maybe she realized you were here waiting for her, and she didn’t want to meet you. I’ve never seen anyone so broken in my life. She thinks you people rejected her, and that rejection is . . . it’s like death to her. I can see it. So maybe she’s just scared to be around you.”

  “None of it makes sense,” Mary mumbled.

  She stood, pushing her own chair back into the wall. “At least we know she was here, and she went off on foot
. I think it’s time Richard and I went looking for her. He won’t want to be pulled off searching for April, but maybe it doesn’t have to be one or the other.”

  “I’ll help,” Chris said.

  She gave him a long, searching look. “All right,” she said finally. “And I’m going to get on the phone and see if any of the other cells of our acquaintance know anything about this exile of yours.”

  “The phone?” Tyler asked. “The Oneness uses the phone? I thought you were some kind of supernatural being.”

  Mary smiled. “We are. But we’re not above a little old-fashioned sleuthing. Of course, if you really want to see more of the supernatural in action . . .”

  “That’s okay,” Tyler said. The image of the thing that had capsized his boat and died at the end of Reese’s sword was still fresh in his mind. “I don’t mind old-fashioned.” His mouth twisted downward. “I’ll help too. I’m the one who lost her.”

  “Hey,” Chris said. “I don’t think it’s your fault.”

  “Sure it is,” Tyler said, his expression still grim. “I’ve been watching out for her all day. Don’t know what I was thinking, taking my eyes off her at the end.”

  “You didn’t know she was planning to run,” Mary said.

  He shrugged. “Maybe she didn’t know that either, until she did it. She’s grieving. People who are grieving might do anything.”

  Chapter 6

  Mary left the cottage with a heavy heart. The boys had decided to go back out and keep looking for Reese, searching the cliff paths with heavy-duty flashlights. She suspected they wouldn’t find the girl. Despite Tyler’s assertion that Reese’s running off might have been unpremeditated, Mary doubted it. Those who were heavily afflicted with grief might be given to making unpredictable decisions, but they were not usually full of the courage, strength, or initiative it would take to go into the wilderness surrounding the village, in the dark, and face an active enemy.