Royal (Terk’s Guardians #9)

Chapter 5

J anna dozed in the back of the car, slipping in and out of sleep as the miles droned on. She kept a link in the direction of Royal, but nothing changed, nothing seemed to be any different. When a phone jangled, breaking the long stretch of silence, she shifted in the back seat and sat up to listen.

Calum put it on Speakerphone. “Terk, what’s up?” he asked.

“Danger. Get off that main road. Find some place or another way to travel. Royal and his friend are also heading into trouble themselves.” And, with that, Terk ended the call.

She sucked in her breath, wanting to ask a million questions, wanting Terk to give them some assurance, to get some assessment that everything would be okay, but she knew from the silence around them that it wasn’t to be.

At that, Calum turned and asked her, “You got any direction in mind?”

She stared at him blankly and looked around. “All I can tell you is to go right.”

At that, Rick snorted. “What is with you guys? Left, right, left, right, that’s about all we ever hear.”

She stared at him. “Do you have others who can do this?”

“Yeah, one anyway,” he replied, “but, just like you, he’s always on the verge of vague.”

“I’m not necessarily accustomed to doing this,” she shared. “And I’m worried about being wrong.”

“We don’t have time for being wrong, but neither do we have time for cautious,” Calum noted, twisting in his seat to face her. “So, if anything triggers you, we need to hear it immediately because we are making some moves now.”

“But we have no place to go. This road only heads in one direction,” she cried out.

“It goes to all kinds of places, as all roads do.”

She frowned, her mind suddenly glomming onto the problem. “Ditch the car.”

Immediately Calum looked over at Rick, but Rick was already pulling the vehicle into a copse of trees and parking. Calum eyed her and asked, “Seriously?”

She nodded. “Get out now.” She was already scrambling for the door handle to exit the vehicle. They’d barely made it off the road and into the trees when several other vehicles came from the same direction they had been traveling. These vehicles hit the brakes just as they went past, then squealed and backed up toward them.

“Oh God,” she whispered, as she was jolted from her stupor with Rick and Calum pulling her in the direction of the woods around them. No snow was on the ground, thankfully, and they weren’t leaving tracks—or, if they were, it wasn’t much. Still, Calum and Rick were insistent on getting her deeper and deeper into the trees. She appreciated that they had their heads in the game more than she obviously did. Yet she knew something very similar was happening to Royal.

She was already tired, and her legs were sore, and she could barely even function as it was, and still they were moving so fast. By the time she was allowed to stop, her legs were beyond shaky, and she collapsed onto the ground, gasping for breath. She looked up at them, about to say something, then stopped because there was no point. No point in arguing, and she didn’t have the energy for it.

Calum crouched in front of her. “Hey,” he murmured. “Sorry for the speed. I know that wasn’t a comfortable pace for you, which is why you’re out of breath so badly, but, when we tell you to run, you run.”

She gave him a slight nod, as she got her breath back. When she finally felt more in control, she whispered, “Royal’s having the same issue coming up.”

“Can you warn him?”

She shrugged. “If I wasn’t using all my energy to keep myself conscious, I might. I’ve been sending him messages for days, even before this op began, but I don’t know that he’s getting them. Hell, I don’t know that he’s gotten any messages,” she admitted, struggling to keep the bitterness from her tone.

“We understand that. Just keep doing what you can.”

“Why is it that doesn’t ever seem to be enough?” she asked, staring up at them. “How can you keep doing this job without ever knowing anything, without ever having any assurance available to give you a confirmation that what you’re doing is right?”

“We do have hope in Terk, who is usually working in the background. Even in his silence, sometimes we just take it all on faith,” Calum replied, with a wry smile. “And, when life happens, you do the best to adapt and to stay on your toes, though you don’t have much of anything else you can do. We don’t like those kinds of cases, but they do happen. We just listen and keep going.… That’s the best any of us can do.” With that, he held out a hand to her and added, “Speaking of which, we need to keep going.”

She groaned and let him help her get back on her feet again. Still shaky, she looked over at Rick, who appeared not to be affected at all. “I gather you guys are used to running for your lives through woods at the drop of a hat.”

Calum shrugged. “We’re also not sharing our energy, trying to keep somebody else alive.” He gave her a pointed look. “And your energy is draining in too many directions.”

She stopped and stared at him. “What?”

Calum frowned. “Do you not know that’s what you’re doing?… An energy that’s uncontrolled or not balanced can also be very dangerous. Terk could help you learn more about that,” he stated.

Rick walked closer and studied her. “Yeah, she’s sending a lot of her energy to Royal.” He gave her a hard look. “So, you might be telling us that you don’t really care or that it’s all just because he’s the father of your child, but I can see energy very clearly, and I do understand that you are filled with an awful lot of emotions.”

“Sure,” she confirmed, “emotions are involved. I told you that. But I have no clarity as to those emotions. It’s too confused with everything else that’s going on.”

“Sure it is,” Calum agreed, his tone soothing. “Dealing with layers and layers of trauma and energy is not something you’ll sort out overnight.”

“And yet it feels as if I should,” she murmured, as she stared around at the space she was in. “This is particularly painful for me.”

“Yeah, for us too,” Rick stated.

She glared at him. “Look. I get it. You’ve got a problem with me, and I wasn’t really trying to cause you any trouble. I am trying to save Royal, though.”

At that, Calum grabbed Rick’s arm and hers and addressed them both. “If you two would solve your personal problems and get over it, we would all get through this a lot faster.”

Rick stared at her for a long moment and then nodded. “I get that you are a newbie energy worker, but I can’t have you holding us back. That’s what I’ve been worried about right from the beginning. You are proving my point, as, even right now, you’re holding us back. We’re using energy to keep ourselves on our feet, and, as much as I appreciate the fact that you’re using your energy to help keep Royal on his feet, you’re slowing us down. You need to understand that your energy flow is not enough to do both.”

“Yet energy is universal,” she snapped.

He gave her a crooked smile. “Exactly. So why aren’t you using the energy around you then?”

She blinked. “You don’t understand.… When I told you that I had an affinity for things metallic or mechanical, I meant it.”

Calum, who had walked ahead a few feet, stopped, pivoted back to her, and asked, “Do you mean that you can draw energy from all things metallic or mechanical?”

She nodded slowly. “Yes, that’s how I usually get my energy.… Even surrounded by Mother Nature here, I’m one of those weirdos who gets energy from inanimate objects. So, while you guys have your energy flowing through you at a regular pace, I was doing much better in the vehicle because I could get energy from that.”

The men just stared at her, as if she were not from here.

Finally Calum shared, “Energy is everywhere around you, and you have absolutely no need to only get your energy from inanimate objects.”

She stared at him furiously. “You do know that we’re all different, right? If I could get it easily from other areas, I would. It’s just that my energy source comes as second nature from metallic objects. Otherwise I work much harder at it.”

The two men looked at each other, and Rick chuckled. “The more we’re in this industry, the more we realize we don’t know everything. Now, nothing here’s inanimate, so you’ll just have to plow through,” he told Janna. “Maybe you could cut lover boy’s energy a little bit and let the others sustain him, if they can. Then let’s get you back into a vehicle as soon as we can, where at least we know that we won’t lose you on this journey.”

*

Royal hated to say it, but he felt his energy flagging. He looked over at Bruce, who was still out. Yet energy was flowing through the vehicle, so he knew that something was going on. Royal just wished some of it was for him. Almost immediately some energy surged in his direction, giving him a jolt.

He sat up straighter in the vehicle. “Thanks for that,” he muttered aloud, with a big smile. “I’m not sure who you are and what’s going on here, but…” Just then a sudden instinct slammed into him. He would call it an instinct, but it was almost a voice, something dark and cloudy.

Get off the road now .

He didn’t question it for a moment and swerved the vehicle off the road and into a bank of trees, but he didn’t have a whole lot of places where he could hide. Knowing that he had to make do, and, with his instincts still screaming at him to get out of the vehicle, he exited and raced around to Bruce’s side. He bent down and groaned, knowing that the energy expenditure to do this would be horrific, but he had no choice.

Picking up his friend, he tossed him over his shoulder, grateful in a weird way that Bruce had lost so much weight. In Royal’s also weakened state, that was likely the only reason Royal was even capable of carrying the load, he figured, as he slipped deeper into the trees. Once they were safely out of sight amid the brush and trees, he sat quietly, knowing no way he could run, alone or with Bruce. So the best that he could do was try and make a stand here. In his rush to save himself and Bruce, he had left the two guns and ammo behind in the car.

So he really had no way to defend himself. He looked around to see if anything in the forest might help him.

A tree stood off to the side that had branches low enough that he could possibly get up in it, but he couldn’t leave Bruce exposed on the ground. He looked for a way to cover and hide his friend, which should work as long as Bruce stayed unconscious. Royal found quite a lot of brush and downed branches on the ground, and he quickly laid Bruce in a good spot, brought over a bunch of brush from the area, then piled it up and around him, leaving his airways clear and free. Then hearing sounds and voices coming his direction, Royal jumped up to the lowest limb of the tree, then scooted on up as high as he could go.

Up here, he started pouring as much Mother Nature energy into his system as he could, but it was slow and tedious because he himself was worn down, exhausted, needing energy, food, and rest. Yet none of that was happening anytime soon.

He almost laughed at that because the other thing that wasn’t happening was his becoming a prisoner again. Not again. Not now. Not ever. He hunkered down on the branch, wrapping what little energy he had around him, as if a blanket of camouflage—something he knew other people could do, but he’d never had a chance to even practice or try out such a skill himself. Yet he knew the energy was here for him. It was all around him, but helping Bruce had drained a lot of Royal’s own supply. If he could just rest here long enough to recoup some energy, he would be fine.

At least that was the thought. And, with that, he sank into half a stupor, opening every portal he could to pull as much energy as possible from the trees and his surroundings, even as he heard sounds of men approaching in the distance. He shuddered and sank deeper, willing Bruce to stay quiet. This would be a terrible time for him to wake up. Almost as if he had put the thought into his buddy’s mind, the brushes below him stirred. Royal tried to send a message to Bruce, but it wasn’t getting anywhere.

He watched with almost a fatalistic sense of despair as Bruce shifted enough that the brush, or at least a part of it, fell away, leaving him exposed. Now Royal had two options. He could climb down and cover Bruce back up again, or he could stay up here and hope for the best. But he also knew that, if Bruce was found, so was he. And, with that thought, slowly, stealthily, he climbed down from the tree, until he was on the ground, moving the brush around to hide Bruce better.

As he slipped around behind the tree to try and crawl back up again, a man called out to freeze. Seconds later, the butt end of a rifle was slammed into his kidney. With his heart sinking, he realized he’d been found.