03 Saints Read online

  “Yep. Reaper, um, freed me about three years ago. I’ve been part of the Saints ever since.”

  “I see,” I said, letting her keep her story to herself. I didn’t feel it was right to pry when I definitely didn’t want anyone prying into mine.

  River seemed to appreciate me not asking about her history. She continued with her explanation.

  “We can be a rambunctious, crazy bunch, but we’re all agreed on one thing…this war, Marcus’ Seekers, everything, needs to stop before it destroys us all.”

  She said it with the fervor of one who truly believed what they were saying. I wasn’t sure if Reaper had sent her to try and sway me to their way of thinking, or if she thought it was important for me know. Her words made sense, though, more sense than I wanted them to.

  “I can agree to that,” I said reluctantly.

  “It’s strange how many can’t. They’re scared, afraid of what will happen to them if they are found…so they give up. They join Marcus or the brothers, just to feel safe again. They don’t realize that joining them lowers their life expectancy,” she said.

  “That just means the other groups have a lot of scared, uncommitted people on the opposite side of the fence.”

  “There are also a lot of determined, smart, people as well,” River said.

  She pushed through a heavy set of doors, and we walked down three sets of stairs. On the first floor of the large school, she took me down another long hallway lined with doors. These doors were universally open. Chairs and desks were scattered about the rooms, blackboards filled with obscenities and pictures were in every room. I could tell the rooms weren’t used for much beyond the occasional get together of party-seeking Watchers. The only door that was shut was the last door in the hall. I was naturally, immediately curious.

  “What’s in there?” I asked.

  “That leads down to arena. It’s where we go to hash out our problems, without bringing the whole building down.”

  “Oh,” I said, wondering how often that happened.

  “Through here,” she said, ignoring my unspoken question.

  She led me through a large gym and into a locker room. She set the clothes down on a bench and pointed out where everything was.

  “The showers are through there. Soap and shampoo are kept in that end locker there. Take whatever you need,” she said.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Can you find your way back up, or do I need to hang around?” she asked.

  “I’m fine. Thanks for showing me the way.”

  “Sure. I’ll be in the common area if you need me. It’s on the second floor, all the way to the end of the hall. Just follow the sounds of people being loud and crazy, and you’ll find it,” she said.

  “Okay,” I said.

  She smiled at me and left the locker room. I waited to hear the sounds of her feet on the hall before I allowed myself the chance to relax. Though she was kind, the tension had become too much of a habit. It would take more to make me feel completely at ease around the people here. When she was gone, I focused on the reason I was in the locker room.

  I scooped up the clothes River had leant me, found what I needed for the shower, and let myself into the showers. The showers were actually one big room; it offered little in the way of privacy. The room was full of shower heads hanging from the ceiling; there were around forty or fifty shower heads bolted to stone columns. The floor of the room was concrete, while the walls were made of white stone. A bench ran the length of the back wall, for people to set their things on.

  After double checking no one was around, I undressed slowly, hampered by my injury. I removed the bandage on my shoulder carefully, eyeing the wound for a moment. It was red, but had started to close. I hoped that was a good sign and not a sign of infection or something worse. It was hard to tell.

  I kept the knife close as I undressed, still feeling as if I would be attacked at any moment. Finally undressed, I put the knife on the ground next to me and turned on the water. It sputtered and flickered for a minute, but finally came out in a steady stream of hot water.

  I washed my body three times, determined to get the dirt, blood, and memories of the past off. It wasn’t until I rinsed my foot – a foot I had managed to keep buried in dirt – that I realized washing the past off was not so easy.

  When I saw the number Mama Dot had tattooed on me, so dark against my pale, now clean, skin, it was like a punch to the gut. I sank to the floor at the sight of it, memories of my time in the pit flooding through my body. It was like I was reliving it – every blow, every moment of pain surged through my body, like it was the first time.

  I took hold of the soap and started scrubbing at the numbers, trying to get them off. I wanted the memories to stop. I wanted the past to be someone else’s past. When the soap failed to scrub the numbers away, I started using my nails to try and get them off. Scrubbing too hard – blood starting to leak down from the wounds I was gouging in to my flesh – I started sobbing. The cries racked through my body. It was the first time I had allowed myself any emotion beyond anger in a long time. The feeling overwhelmed my senses. A part of me cringed away from the crying, fearing it was a loss of something. Another part of me, the part that was healthy, told me to keep on crying, to keep crying until I had gotten all the crying out of my system. The two conflicting urges kept my body locked in a state of war.

  I wasn’t sure how long I sat there crying and trying to get the numbers off my skin, but it was long enough for someone to hear me with their super-hearing. It was long enough for the fact that something wasn’t right to sink into their awareness.

  A towel was wrapped around me, and gentle hands forced me to stand, tearing my hands away from my foot.

  “Come on,” Reaper said, his face appearing out of the haze of my tears. “Come sit down.”

  I was still crying, but I did as he asked, not resisting his touch. It was too hard to fight back, when I was lost in the pain. He helped me sit on the bench then bent down to look at my foot. Bright red blood dripped on to the concrete of the floor, as he gently held my foot. He sighed when he realized what I had done. I could tell he knew what the numbers meant. He picked his cellphone out of his pocket and dialed a number.

  “River, come to the showers, please…Thanks.” He hung up again.

  “Mmmmyyyy kniffee?” I asked stuttering over the words as I cried.

  He dropped my foot and fetched the blade for me. “Here it is,” he assured me.

  I wrapped my hand around the hilt, treating it as a child would treat a safety blanket. It was my protection from the bad things. Reaper turned off the water from the shower and sat down next to me in silence. He let me cry without trying to comfort me, without saying words I would hate him for later. It made me feel better.

  It didn’t take River long to come downstairs. When she saw me, and the blood dripping from my foot, her eyes grew pained.

  “She said she didn’t want me to hang around,” she explained to Reaper. “I would have stayed, if I thought…”

  “Just fix her up,” Reaper told her.

  She bent down, but hesitated before she touched me. “Is it okay to touch you?” she asked.

  I nodded, not really knowing what I was agreeing to. So what if she touched me? It wouldn’t stop the pain in my chest.

  Her hands were gentle as she cleaned up the blood I had etched out with my nails and put a bandage on my foot. As she worked, her eyes let me know she understood the tattoo as well. It went beyond simple understanding. When she was done with my foot, she put a fresh bandage on my shoulder. I let her tend to my wounds without moving. The tears tracking down my face were all I could focus on.

  “You smell a lot better,” she told me as she finished tying the last knot on the cloth at my shoulder.

  I almost laughed. I wiped away some of the tears on my face. “Thanks.”

  “I’ll leave you ladies to it…” Reaper said. He looked relieved that I had stopped crying. “I’ve got som
e details to work out, about something scheduled tonight. If you need to talk…” Reaper left the offer hanging.

  I nodded, unable to meet his eyes. I hated he had seen me like this; I hated anyone had seen me like this. He left, and River took his seat. Understanding and compassion radiated from her body. The compassion linked us for a long moment; neither of us felt compelled to speak. River broke the ice.

  “Can I get you anything?” River asked.

  “No,” I said quickly, not wanting to be the helpless patient any longer.

  I sniffed and wiped the rest of the wayward tears away. The tears had given me a portion of my emotions back. I felt my mind working beyond the shield I had built up. I wasn’t back to normal, but I was working on it. A veil had lifted from my heart, and I realized that I had to keep the numbness away. Keeping it away meant finding the rest of my emotional stability.

  “Yes,” I said suddenly.

  “What?”

  What mattered now that I was free was finding out what had happened to the others I cared about most. I had to know if they were dead. Maybe, I would help the Saints – if they were legitimately concerned with helping people. Maybe, I would go find Anna and show her my new knife – before hunting Lorian down and making him pay. I wasn’t really sure what I would do; all I knew was that I had to know where my family was. They were the only thing that mattered now. Knowing what had happened to them would decide my future. If they were dead, I knew the veil would never lift entirely. But if they were alive…

  “I need to check on someone…multiple someones,” I told River. “I need to know what happened to them.”

  “Family?” she asked carefully.

  “Yes,” I agreed.

  She eyed me curiously. Her words were dark, but I knew she felt she had an obligation to say them to me, to save me despair in the future. They were words born out of experience.

  “If Lorian’s people took you from them, they’re probably dead. They don’t leave human survivors to come looking for their loved ones. It’s too messy.”

  “It’s not like that,” I explained. “Anna took me from Marcus’ nest in New Orleans. My friends and I were trying to free the people down there. There was an explosion after she captured me, and I have to know if they got out.”

  River’s eyes lit up with surprise. Whatever she had thought of my past, she hadn’t included New Orleans into her guess.

  “You were there, at Marcus’ nest when it blew up?” she asked.

  “You heard about that?” I asked, equally as surprised.

  “Are you kidding? When one of Marcus’ nests gets blown up, that sociopath Damian is killed, and a good portion of his Seekers in the city are wiped out, we hear about it. It’s our job to hear about it. I can’t believe that was you!” River said.

  “I have a way with chaos,” I said.

  She was thinking over my words, her face a mixture of cautiousness and excitement. Her next question was curious.

  “You mentioned an Anna…who is she to you?” she asked.

  “Anna is one of Lorian’s soldiers. She’s aiming for best murderer of the year, I think. Keeps killing people. She was the one who captured me and sent me to rot in that hell hole. If I ever get the chance, I’m going to hunt her down and kill her dead,” I promised.

  “Ah.”

  River clasped her hands together thoughtfully and stared at her feet. She frowned as if she couldn’t believe anything I had said.

  “So, all you want is for us to help you find out about your friends in New Orleans?” River asked.

  I shook my head. I had no intention of letting them help me. It wasn’t just that I didn’t fully trust them yet, it was the fact that my life had a way of sucking people into dangerous situations they had no business being sucked into. I was more aware of that than ever. I shook my head for another reason. I seriously doubted New Orleans was the answer to finding them.

  “I just need a ride back to my hometown. If my friends are alive, they wouldn’t have stuck around in New Orleans for long. I mean, I know you guys saved my life and you don’t owe me anything, but even a bus ticket would be a big help. I’ll owe you. I’m good on paying my debts.”

  She waved a hand, dismissing my promise. “Let me talk to Reaper. I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Thanks,” I said, hoping she meant it.

  “In the meantime, I think you should get some rest,” she said.

  “I’ll think about it,” I said.

  She stood. “Are you okay now?” she asked, before she walked away.

  I sighed. Crying had taken a lot out of me, and the dark depression hovered near my heart, but I was free, and I had a purpose again. That purpose was all that mattered.

  “Better than I’ve been in a long time,” I said.

  She nodded and left me to change in private. I got dressed, every piece of clothing I put on added to the feeling I had carried with me since I had woken up. I had escaped from the darkness of the pit a new person. I was no longer the Clare I had known. I had found the ability to look death in the eyes and not fear it; I had experienced an erosion of some of my most deeply held opinions, and an affirmation of others, and had found myself tested in ways no person should feel tested. But I was, more than ever, determined to never live in a cage, to stop the violence around me, and protect the ones I love. I would do what it took to find Daniel, Ellen, Alex, and the others. Nothing would stand in my way.

  Lost in the realization that I had changed more than I had ever thought I could, I finally stood. The clothing River had given me was a mirror of my old self and a reflection of my new self. They mirrored my Punk sense of taste, but they were darker. It was the clothing of someone who would do whatever it took to get the job done.

  Reaper and River were waiting for me in the room I had woken up in. Reaper’s eyes were burning with curiosity. It was obvious River had told him about New Orleans. I thought he was going to question me, to figure how I tied in to so many extraordinary circumstances, but he didn’t.

  “River tells me you wish to look for some people,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “May I make a suggestion?” he asked.

  “I suppose,” I said.

  “You can barely walk, your face looks like someone used it as a punching bag, your shoulder is weak from your gunshot, and you look as if you haven’t had a good meal in a year…take some time, a couple weeks at most, to get back to full strength. Then, when you have that strength, I promise to personally help you search for your friends.”

  “Two weeks?” I asked.

  “What is two weeks, if it means you are better able to search for your friends?” Reaper asked.

  “Listen to him,” River encouraged. “You won’t do anyone any good if you collapse during the search.”

  Two weeks felt like an eternity, but I sensed the logic in his words. It would give me time to come up with a plan. It would give me time to gain my strength back for a search that could take months.

  It occurred to me that Reaper might have been manipulating me somehow, but I needed his help, and I wanted to believe he was looking out for me. I needed allies more than I needed paranoia. It was a leap of faith I had to take.

  “Two weeks,” I agreed. “But don’t think you can push the time back again. If you don’t help me after those two weeks, I’m gone.”

  “I am a man of my word,” Reaper said.

  “We’ll see,” I replied.

  He walked around me to get to the door. As he passed me, his eyes told me he wasn’t a liar; he didn’t make promises he didn’t intend on keeping. I hoped his eyes were prone to telling the truth.

  River smiled amicably when he was gone. “Since you’ll be staying, do you want to meet the others? They’ve been pretty curious about you.”

  “Others?” I asked. Did she mean the whole group? There had been lots of faces on the grounds…there was no way she could mean all of them.

  “We have some who are just looking for protection, a
place to lie low. We have those who are in transit. They don’t know what they are looking for. Then, there are the actual members of the Saints. They’re the ones who have decided, like me, to make a stand for something. They are the ones that carry out the actual missions. There are different levels in that, though, ‘cause, you know, trust is hard to come by. There are ten of us who are sort of…”

  “Generals?” I supplied.

  “I like that,” she agreed. “Within the Saints, there are those who have proven themselves to us, but haven’t been around long enough to gain ‘general’ status. And then there are those who are trying to prove themselves and earn their acceptance in the group.”

  “Sounds pretty complicated,” I said. “Is Reaper a general?”

  “He’s the president,” she said.

  “Not dictator?” I asked.

  River smiled. “No. He started the Saints, but we always have a choice whether or not to follow him, which we always do…follow him, I mean. He’s smart, takes care of us, and has a master plan locked in his head. He’ll lead us to victory, I’m sure.”

  Her confidence in him said a lot about her and even more about him. I just wondered if they weren’t deluding themselves. Not dying felt like a win to me – what they had in mind would take years, if not centuries. Fighting against Lorian, Darian and Marcus was not as easy as she made it sound.

  “Lead the way, I guess,” I said.

  I followed River out of the room and down the hall. She led me toward the stairs again. As we walked, she talked about the group – its mission and its purpose. She kept circling back to the ideals of the group and that all Watchers deserved freedom. She was very adamant on that issue. I listened carefully. Part of me was skeptical of the fact that they could just be romanticizing freedom fighters, spouting the ideals, but not doing as much as they claimed. Another part of me loved the idea of what they were trying to accomplish. If it was true.

  On the second floor, she took me down the long hall and into an open room at the very end of the hall. This room had sofas and round tables scattered around in a chaotic clutter. People sat around the tables and on the sofas, some in groups, and others singularly. It made the room feel even more cluttered. There was a lot of noise in the form of laughter, talking and music, as people let off steam and did whatever they wanted.