Teardrop

30 THE SEEDBEARERS

Rhoda shoved past the Seedbearer, who glanced bitterly at Eureka, then spun around to cross the porch.

“William!” Rhoda shouted. “Claire!”

Ander rushed through the door after Rhoda. By the time Eureka, Dad, and Cat made it to the covered patio outside, the Seedbearer was at the bottom of the porch stairs. At the top, Ander had tackled Rhoda. He had her pinned against one of the colonettes of the balustrade. Her arms writhed at her sides. She kicked, but Ander held her body still as easily as if she were a child.

“Let go of my wife,” Dad snarled, and lunged toward Ander.

With a single hand Ander held him back, too. “You can’t save them. That isn’t how this works. All you’ll do is get yourself hurt.”

“My children!” Rhoda wailed, keeling over in Ander’s arms.

The odor of citronella was overpowering. Eureka’s eyes traveled past the porch to the lawn. Standing among acid-green ferns and the mottled trunks of live oaks were the same four Seedbearers she’d encountered on the road. They formed a line facing the porch, steely gazes eyeing the scene Eureka and her family were making. The Seedbearer who had knocked on their door had rejoined his group. He stood half a foot ahead of the others, hands crossed over his chest, turquoise eyes challenging Eureka to do something.

And behind the Seedbearers—Eureka’s body seized and a wave of red spots swam before her eyes. Suddenly she knew why Ander was holding Rhoda back.

The twins were hog-tied to the swing set. One metal chain from each swing bound the wrists of each twin. Their arms stretched above their heads, linked by the knotted chain that had been looped over the long horizontal top bar of the swing set. The other two chains had been used to bind the twins’ ankles. Those chains were then secured in knots on the sides of the swing set’s A-frame bars. William and Claire hung at a slant.

The worst part was that the swings’ splintery wooden seats had been wedged into the twins’ mouths. Duct tape held the seats in as gags. Tears streamed down the children’s faces. Their eyes bulged in pain and fear. Their bodies shook with whimpers the gags prevented Eureka from hearing.

How long had they been tied up like that? Had the Seedbearers broken into the twins’ bedroom in the night, while Ander was guarding Eureka? She felt sick with rage, consumed by guilt. She had to do something.

“I’m going out there,” Dad said.

“Stay here if you want your kids returned alive.” Ander’s command was quiet but authoritative. It stopped Dad at the top step of the porch. “This has to be handled exactly right—or we’re going to be very sorry.”

“What kind of sick jerks would do that to a couple of kids?” Cat whispered.

“They call themselves Seedbearers,” Ander said, “and they raised me. I know their sickness well.”

“I’ll kill them,” Eureka muttered.

Ander relaxed his grip on Rhoda, let her fall into her husband’s arms. He turned to Eureka, his expression overwhelmingly sad. “Promise me that will be a very last resort.”

Eureka squinted at Ander. She wanted to kill the Seedbearers, but she was unarmed, outnumbered, and had never punched anything more animate than a wall. But Ander looked so concerned that she was serious, she felt the need to reassure him it wasn’t a fully cooked plan. “Okay”—she felt ridiculous—“I promise.”

Dad and Rhoda took each other’s arms. Cat’s gaze was welded to the swing set. Eureka forced herself to look where she did not want to look. The twins’ bodies were still and taut. Their terrified eyes were their only moving parts.

“This isn’t fair,” she told Ander. “It’s me the Seedbearers want. I’m the one who should go out there.”

“You will need to face them”—Ander took her hand—“but you must not be a martyr. If something should happen to the twins, to anyone else you care about, you have to understand that it is more important you survive.”

“I can’t think about that,” she said.

Ander stared at her. “You have to.”

“I think this pep talk has gone on long enough,” the Seedbearer in the gray suit called from the lawn. He motioned for Ander to wrap it up.

“And I think you four have been here long enough,” Eureka called back at the Seedbearers. “What will it take for you to leave?” She strode forward, approaching the stairs, trying to look calm even as her heart thundered in her chest. She had no idea what she was doing.

She realized there was something else disconcerting about the scene beyond the porch: the rain had stopped.

No. Eureka heard the downpour against trees nearby. She smelled the salty electricity of the storm right under her nose. She felt the humidity like a pelt over her skin. She saw the brown current at the edge of the lawn—the bayou, flooded and rough and nearly overflowing its banks the way it did during a hurricane.

The bad weather hadn’t blown over, but somehow the twins, and the Seedbearers, and the lawn they stood on, weren’t getting wet. The wind was still, the temperature cooler than it should have been.

Eureka hovered at the edge of the covered porch. Her eyes rose skyward and she squinted into the atmosphere. The storm roiled overhead. Lightning surged. She saw the torrent of raindrops falling. But something happened to the rain along its path from the turbulent black clouds to Eureka’s backyard.

It disappeared.

There was a foreign dimness to the yard that made Eureka claustrophobic, as if the sky were caving in.

“You’re wondering about the rain.” Ander extended an open palm beyond the limit of the porch. “In their immediate vicinity, Seedbearers have power over wind. One of the more common ways it’s used is to create atmospheric buffers. The buffers are called ‘cordons.’ They can be any shape and many magnitudes.”

“That’s why you weren’t wet when you came through my window last night,” Eureka guessed.

Ander nodded. “And that’s why no rain falls in this yard. Seedbearers don’t like to get wet if they can help it, and they can almost always help it.”

“What else do I need to know about them?”

Ander leaned in to her right ear. “Critias,” he whispered in a voice that was nearly inaudible. She followed his gaze to the male Seedbearer on the far left and realized Ander was giving her a primer. “We used to be close.” The man was younger than the other Seedbearers, with wild cowlicks in his thick silver hair. He wore a white shirt and gray suspenders. “He used to be almost human.”

Critias watched Eureka and Ander with such inscrutable interest Eureka felt naked.

“Starling.” Ander moved on to the ancient-looking woman wearing slacks and a gray cashmere sweater who stood to Critias’s right. She seemed barely able to hold herself up on her own, but her chin was lifted assertively. Her blue eyes beamed a frightening smile. “She feeds on vulnerability. Show none.”

Eureka nodded.

“Albion.” The next Seedbearer in line was the man who had knocked on Eureka’s back door. “The leader,” Ander said. “No matter what happens, do not take his hand.”

“And the last one?” Eureka glanced at the frail, grandmotherly woman in the gray floral sundress. Her long silver braid draped over her shoulder, ending at her waist.

“Chora,” Ander said. “Don’t be fooled by her appearance. Every scar on my body comes from her”—he swallowed, and added under his breath—“almost. She crafted the wave that killed your mother.”

Eureka’s hands balled into fists. She wanted to scream, but that was a kind of vulnerability she refused to show. Be stoic, she coached herself. Be strong. She stood on the dry grass and faced the Seedbearers.

“Eureka,” Dad said. “Come back here. What are you doing—”

“Let them go.” She called to the Seedbearers, nodding in the twins’ direction.

“Of course, child.” Albion extended his pale palm. “Simply place your hand in mine and the twins will be unbound.”

“They’re innocent!” Rhoda moaned. “My children!”

“We understand,” Albion said. “And they’ll be free to go as soon as Eureka—”

“First unbind the twins,” Ander said. “This has nothing to do with them.”

“And nothing to do with you.” Albion turned to Ander. “You were released from this operation weeks ago.”

“I’ve reenlisted.” Ander glanced at each Seedbearer, as if to ensure they all understood which side he was on now.

Chora scowled. Eureka wanted to lunge at her, to yank every long strand of silver hair from her head, to yank out her heart until it stopped beating, like Diana’s had.

“You’ve forgotten what you are, Ander,” Chora said, “It is not our job to be happy, to be in love. We exist to make happiness and love possible for others. We protect this world from the dark encroachment this one wants to enable.” She pointed a hooked finger at Eureka.

“Wrong,” Ander said. “You live a negative existence with negative goals. None of you know for sure what would happen if Atlantis were to rise.”

Starling, the eldest Seedbearer, gave a disgusted cough. “We raised you to be smarter than this. Did you not memorize the Chronicles? Do thousands of years of history mean nothing to you? Have you forgotten the dark, hovering spirit of Atlas, who has made no secret of his aim to annihilate this world? Love has blinded you to your heritage. Do something about him, Albion.”

Albion thought for a moment. Then he spun toward the swing set and used a fist to belt William and Claire across their stomachs.

Both twins heaved, making retching motions as they gagged on the wooden planks stuffed in their mouths. Eureka heaved in empathy. She couldn’t stand it anymore. She looked at her hand, then at Albion’s extended hand. What could happen if she touched him? If the twins were freed, then perhaps it would be worth whatever—

A blur of red registered in the corner of Eureka’s eye. Rhoda was running for the swing set, for her children. Ander cursed under his breath and raced after her.

“Someone please stop her,” Albion said, sounding bored. “We’d really rather not—Oh, well. Too late now.”

“Rhoda!” Eureka’s shout echoed across the lawn.

As Rhoda was passing Albion, the Seedbearer reached out and grabbed her hand. Instantly she froze, her arm as stiff as a plaster cast. Ander stopped short and hung his head, seeming to know what was coming.

Beneath Rhoda’s feet a cone of volcano-shaped earth bloomed from the ground. At first it looked like a sand boil, a bayou phenomenon whereby a dome-shaped mound rises from nothing into a powerful geyser along a flooded alluvial plain. Sand boils were dangerous because of the torrent of water they spewed from the core of their swiftly formed craters.

This sand boil spewed wind.

Albion’s hand released Rhoda’s, but a connection between them remained. He seemed to hold her by an invisible leash. Her body rose on a sprocket of inexplicable wind that shot her fifty feet into the air.

Her limbs flailed. Her red robe twirled in the air like ribbons on a kite. She soared higher, her body completely out of her control. There was a burst of sound—not thunder, more like a pulse of electricity. Eureka realized Rhoda’s body had broken through the cordon over the yard.

When she entered the storm unsheltered, Rhoda screamed. Rain siphoned through the slender gap created by her body. Wind wailed in like a hurricane. Rhoda’s red silhouette grew smaller in the sky until she looked like one of Claire’s dolls.

The bolt of lightning crackled slowly. It huddled in the clouds, lighting up pockets of dark, twisting atmosphere. When it broke through cloud and tasted bare sky, Rhoda was the closest target.

Eureka braced herself as lightning struck Rhoda’s chest with a single awesome jolt. Rhoda started to scream, but the distant sound cut off in an ugly static sizzle.

When she began to tumble downward, the flailing of her body was different. It was lifeless. Gravity danced with her. Clouds parted sadly as she passed. She crossed the boundary of the Seedbearers’ cordon, which resealed itself somehow over the yard. She thudded powerfully to the ground and left an indentation of her crumpled body a foot deep in the earth.

Eureka fell to her knees. Her hands clasped her heart as she took in Rhoda’s blackened chest; her hair, which had sizzled into nonexistence; her bare arms and legs, webbed with veiny blue lightning scars. Rhoda’s mouth hung open. Her tongue looked singed. Her fingers had frozen into stiff claws, extended toward her children, even in death.

Death. Rhoda was dead because she’d done the only thing any mother would have done: she had tried to stop her children’s suffering. But if it weren’t for Eureka, the twins wouldn’t be in danger and Rhoda wouldn’t have had to save them. She wouldn’t be burnt up, lying dead on the lawn. Eureka couldn’t look at the twins. She couldn’t bear to see them as destroyed as she’d been ever since she lost Diana.

An animalistic yelp came from behind Eureka on the porch. Dad was on his knees. Cat’s hands hung on his shoulders. She looked pale and uncertain, as if she might be sick. When Dad rose to his feet, he staggered shakily down the stairs. He was a foot away from Rhoda’s body when Albion’s voice stopped him cold.

“You look like a hero, Dad. Wonder what you’re going to do.”

Before Dad could respond, Ander reached into the pocket of his jeans. Eureka gasped when he pulled out a small silver gun. “Shut up, Uncle.”

“ ‘Uncle,’ is it?” Albion’s smile showed grayish teeth. “Giving up?” He chuckled. “What’s he got, a toy gun?”

The other Seedbearers laughed.

“Funny, isn’t it?” Ander pulled back the slide to load the gun’s chamber. A strange green light emanated from it, forming an aura around the gun. It was the same light Eureka had seen the night Ander brandished the silver case. All four Seedbearers startled at the sight of it. They grew silent, as if their laughter had been sliced off.

“What is that, Ander?” Eureka asked.

“This gun fires bullets made of artemisia,” Ander explained. “It is an ancient herb, the kiss of death for Seedbearers.”

“Where did you get those bullets?” Starling stumbled a few steps back.

“Doesn’t matter,” Critias said quickly. “He’ll never shoot us.”

“You’re wrong,” Ander said. “You don’t know what I’d do for her.”

“Charming,” Albion said. “Why don’t you tell your girlfriend what would happen if you were to kill one of us?”

“Maybe I’m past worrying about that.” The gun clicked as Ander cocked it. But then, instead of pointing the gun at Albion, Ander turned it on himself. He held its barrel to his chest. He closed his eyes.

“What are you doing?” Eureka shouted.

Ander turned to face her, the gun still at his chest. In that moment he looked more suicidal than she knew she had ever been. “Seedbearer breath is controlled by a single higher wind. It is called the Zephyr, and each of us is bound by it. If one of us is killed, all of us die.” He glanced at the twins and swallowed hard. “But maybe it’s better that way.”