44. Sebastion
SEBASTION
NO FUCKIN’ CHANCE
It goes against every instinct I possess to drive toward my home with a couple of passengers in my truck whose eyes and ears remain functional.
For them to be conscious.
For them to know my mother is Arabella Aster, and not just Arabella Jameson.
Sweat trickles along my spine in spite of the cold outside, and though I know everything is okay, though I trust them to do the right thing by my family, I still tap-tap-tap my finger on the steering wheel and bring us around a gentle bend just a single mile out from home.
Power poles line the road every three hundred or so feet, the wires strung fifty feet above our heads.
I count them, just as I’ve done all my life. I use the numbers to regulate my nervous system, so I don’t wrench this fuckin truck around and take Linc and Nova away from my mother’s safe haven.
Before I get a chance to spin the wheel, my phone trills and Mav’s name flashes across the screen.
The soft music piping through my speakers swaps out for my ringtone, then as I hit the button and accept his call, my ringtone is replaced with the whoosh of the wind outside and the commanding bark of orders being handed down.
“Hey. You’re on speaker.” I press a little heavier on the gas pedal and push us faster. “I’m only a minute out.”
“You’re about to come across a mess.” Mav noisily stomps through thick snow. “Some dude hit a patch of ice and skidded off the road. Buckled a power pole just by the front gates.”
Narrowing my eyes, I look at Lincoln and increase our speed just a little more. “Who?”
“Dunno. I’m heading over now to check it out. Jaxen reckons the driver looks older than Moses and maybe had a medical episode or some shit.”
“Where’s Adelita?” I reach up for the radio I normally keep clipped to my shoulder. “And La Bruja.”
“And Scarlett?” Lincoln snarls, oblivious to the fact I asked about her first. Always first. “Where’s my fucking sister?”
Mav’s stunned silence pulses through our call. He knew where I was going, and that I was bringing strange back to the house, and yet…
“They’re at the stables,” he rumbles slowly. Hesitantly. “And Koda, too. I’m about a hundred feet from the gates, so—”
“Leave the gates.” I bring us around the last bend before home and see exactly the mess he’s talking about. “I’m here now. You go to the stables.”
“But they’re—”
“Go to the fucking stables, Maverick! Where’s Dad?”
“He’s at the gate, too.” He spins on his heels and follows orders, because he’s a damn good soldier. But while he walks, he lowers his voice, “The car’s right on top of a plant, Bas. So shit is kinda dicey over there.”
“We’ll deal with it.” I come as close to the chaos as I can manage and slam on the brakes, then I snatch up my phone and move. Shoving my door open, I slide out and leave Lincoln and Nova behind. “I’m here now. I’ll get the car moved. You get eyes on Adelita.”
“Already on my way,” he grumbles, his breath coming a little faster as he goes. “You seriously just drove them here, huh? Didn’t even knock them out?”
I cough out a desperate laugh and spot my dad already too fucking close to an unstable explosive buried not that far underground. “Didn’t even knock them out. I guess I’m evolving or some shit. Call me when you’re with them.”
“Yep.” He kills our call and takes off to follow my orders, so I slip the phone into my pocket and study the old man slumped in the front seat of his crumpled car.
The hood is folded like an accordion, and the wooden power pole cracked right down the middle.
It remains standing, and the wires appear intact, but if they come down, we’re all fucked.
“Is he dead?” I don’t go to him to check.
I walk to my dad instead and narrow my eyes as he literally crawls under the car like he’s not afraid of dying.
“They cut the power, right?” Lowering into a crouch, I wait for his eyes to come to mine.
“I know your dumb ass isn’t crawling on top of an active landmine, while dancing amongst live power lines, with a car dripping gas into the snow… right?”
Snorting, he goes back to whatever the hell he thinks he’s doing. “Power’s cut. Old man is dead. He hit the embankment at a weird angle and tore up a massive divot of grass and dirt. I’m not sure if our plant is where we put it, or if it’s in his lap at this point.”
“And you figure gettin’ real close is the right move instead of, ya know, tying a rope to the car, towing him back, and detonating the explosive in a controlled manner?”
“Eh.” Backing up on soaked hands and knees, he makes it so I want to revisit my earlier years where I would make the beep-beep-beep sound out loud.
Clearing his head and folding back until he sits on his haunches, he looks past me and grins.
“You must be Nova Nichols.” With a heavy grunt and a shove to his feet, my dad, the ever-chivalrous Jameson, extends his hand and moves straight past me.
“Paul Jameson.” The instant their hands touch, he holds on and drags Nova a full fifteen feet to the right.
“We’ve got explosives down there, and though it won’t blow, it’ll burn hot if it goes up.
Sorry my hands are so cold.” He releases her and smiles at Linc.
“If I hadn’t spent almost every single morning of the last three weeks sipping coffee with a different Castro, I might’ve missed the similarities. But I see them in your eyes.”
“We have completely different eyes,” Lincoln grumbles. But at least he shakes my dad’s hand. “Have you looked at her at all?”
“Different colors,” he counters on a soft chuckle. “Same shape. Same upturn when you’re unhappy. Same cheekbones.” Releasing Linc, he sets his hands on his hips and rocks on the backs of his heels. “I know you understand this isn’t usual for us.”
“Dead dudes on the lawn and unstable explosives?”
“Well… that too,” he laughs. “I mostly meant welcoming people onto our property who know…” Wary, he casts his eyes around those surrounding us.
“Stuff. But I like this,” he decides with a nod.
“I like the idea of opening our world again. We did what we had to do for as long as we needed to do it, but things have changed since the summer, and though it’s taking a bit of getting used to, I like to think my family can be free again.
” He drops his chin in a show of respect.
“I adore your sister, Lincoln. I doubt she’d say the same of me.
But I do. I love her fire and commend her strength.
Even when she doesn’t believe she has any. ”
“She’s a good girl,” Linc counters gruffly. “She’s a damn good girl who deserves only the best.”
“Which means we’re in agreement.” Stepping back, Dad claps my shoulder. “The very best.”
I roll my eyes and prepare to toss my old man toward the explosive again, which feels like a better option than listening to him try to convince Linc why I deserve his sister. But then I catch a faint pop-pop in the air.
Like a bloodhound, I bring my eyes up and around. I search the sky for more. More information. More fucking context.
I get none. And still, I turn on my heels and run. Head down, shoulders down, hand in my pocket, I take out my phone and sprint. “Something’s wrong.”