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They came at nightfall.
Taylor’s dad hustled her inside when the first set of headlights came into view. She didn’t go far—she was the one with the Legacies, after all—her dad had only his shotgun and a single box of ammo. Taylor peeked out from behind the screen door, watching the vehicles come.
They made a show of driving up, coming in abreast of each other like they were in formation, riding roughshod over the fields. There were a couple of RVs, some pickup trucks, a handful of motorcycles and a big van like cops would use to haul prisoners. Spray-painted on the sides and hoods of some of the vehicles was that same snake-and-scythe symbol that Silas had tattooed on his forearm.
Her father stood on the porch with his gun ready as the men got out of their cars and formed a perimeter. Taylor assumed they were mostly men, anyway—she couldn’t see their faces. Many of them wore gasmasks. Some of them opted simply for bandannas covering their mouths and noses like outlaws. Taylor didn’t know what to make of the metallic headgear some of them sported. Looked almost like tinfoil hats. Taylor scanned the crowd but couldn’t pick out Silas from their number. There were about thirty of them.
“You people are trespassing!” her father yelled. He made an effort to keep his voice steady, but Taylor could tell he was scared.
The men were armed. Pistols and machine guns and assault rifles. Her dad’s shotgun was loaded with buckshot.
A man came forward from the crowd. He wore a black bandanna, a coal-colored duster and no silly headgear. His curly hair was salt-and-pepper. He held his hands up as if to keep things calm.
“Mr. Cook, isn’t it? Brian Cook? Can I call you Brian?”
Her dad pumped his shotgun in response.
“Now now, Brian, don’t go doing anything rash. We didn’t come all the way out here to hurt you. On the contrary! We came to protect you.”
“Protect me from what?”
“Why, from that thing living in your house,” the man answered.
Taylor thought about the clips she’d seen of the Garde fighting during the invasion. They used their telekinesis to rip the weapons right out of the hands of their enemies. She could do that if she focused.
Except there were an awful lot of guns out there.
She looked down at herself and gasped. There was a red dot on her chest. Someone sighting her through the screen. She ducked behind the door frame, heart pounding.
“They always told us in Sunday school that the devils lived down below, but we know now that’s not the case, don’t we, Brian?” the man was saying. “They came from the stars. Descended just like Lucifer did. Seeded the world with their sin. Now that corruption’s growing, manifesting in ways that defy the laws of nature. Satan, he wants you to see those powers as miracles. He wants you to worship these supposed guardian angels. But I know my Bible, I remember the words of Corinthians—”
“Jesus,” Taylor’s dad said. “Don’t you ever shut up?”
The preacher sighed. “We’re here to Harvest the sin, Mr. Cook. Your daughter, she didn’t choose to have that filth possess her, and my heart goes out. It’s a shameful and ugly business. But we got to do what God commands and Harvest these false prophets before they get a chance to grow. You go ahead and stand aside now, so we can do God’s will.”
While the man spoke, Taylor’s dad half turned and hissed in her direction. “Taylor, you run out the back now.”
“No, Dad.”
“I love you, now you run—!”
Taylor’s dad aimed his shotgun at the preacher.
He fired. And, at the same time, a dozen other guns fired back. Pop-pop-pop. Their peaceful farm, now a war zone.
And then, a moment later, the night sky filled with fire.
CHAPTER TEN
KOPANO OKEKE
ZUMA ROCK, NIGERIA
“DOES FATHER KNOW ABOUT THIS?”
Kopano’s mom stared at him. “What do you think?”
She drove a car borrowed from one of her church friends, Kopano buckled in beside her. He could not remember the last time that he saw his mother drive. She hunched over the wheel, the color drained from her knuckles. She kept checking the rearview mirror, worried they were being followed.
It was Akuziem, his mother, whose cool hand had pressed over Kopano’s mouth and awoken him in the middle of the night.
She had already packed a bag for him.
She led him past the living room, tiptoeing in a way Kopano found overly dramatic. His father was passed out in the armchair, a half-empty bottle of ogogoro in one hand, his cell phone clutched in the other. Finally done making apologies for their lost delivery, Udo had drunken himself into a stupor. When Kopano stopped to stare at his father, Akuziem grabbed his arm and yanked him down the hall.
“Say good-bye to your brothers,” his mother whispered.
Kopano looked at her with alarm. “Are we in trouble, Mama?”
“I am sorting it out,” she whispered back, then waved him forward impatiently. “We must be quick.”
Kopano crept into the narrow bedroom that his little brothers shared. Obi stretched out on his back and snored relentlessly, while little Dubem huddled close to the wall with a pillow pushed over his head. Kopano kissed Obi on the forehead, the boy not even stirring. He couldn’t reach Dubem’s face, nestled as it was in his pillows, so he settled for squeezing his youngest brother’s little arm. Dubem rolled over immediately, tired eyes trying to focus.
“Kopano? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Kopano replied too quickly, his smile forced. “Just saying good night.”
Dubem eyed him skeptically. He soon noticed the canvas pack slung over Kopano’s shoulder. “Is this it? Are you going to America?”
Kopano sensed his mother’s shadow watching from the doorway. Only then did it dawn on Kopano that spiriting him away to the Human Garde Academy was exactly his mother’s plan. He had waited months for this day, but he never expected it to come so abruptly. He had imagined a going-away party with all their neighbors invited along with his friends from school, and then a tearful parting with his family at the airport. When would he see his parents again? His brothers? Would they be all right without him? Kopano wiped the back of his hand across his eyes.
“Yes,” he told Dubem. “Don’t tell Father until morning. He’ll be mad.”
“I will keep your secret,” Dubem said, then sat up to hug him. “Good luck to you, brother. Write me letters.”
The streets of Lagos were far less crowded after midnight, the bumper-to-bumper traffic
and daredevil drivers of the daylight hours gone, although the cavernous potholes that needed careful navigation while the sun was up were even more dangerous now. Kopano found the deserted roads ominous. There were so few other cars that he wondered what sort of sinister people were hidden behind each set of passing headlights. In his mind, he concocted stories for them—criminals and vigilantes and fugitives like him. Was the boy who’d tried to gut him driving around out there, looking for vengeance?
“Father’s gotten us in trouble, hasn’t he?” Kopano said to break the silence.
“Not just Father, hmm?” his mother replied, then adjusted the rearview mirror. “Or did he force you to go along with his stupid scheme? You, with your powers . . .”
Kopano crossed his arms. “I thought . . . we needed the money. I didn’t expect what happened to happen.”
She tossed her head, dismissing Kopano’s words. “Too late now, my son. You and your father angered some very bad people. Powerful people. And all your father can think to do is drink and cry on the phone and beg mercy. So, you and I will fix this. We know people more powerful than these so-called big men.”
“Who? Who do we know?”
“The United Nations,” his mother replied firmly. “Your friend John Smith.”
Kopano stared at her like she’d gone mad. “They will take me to the Academy in America, Mama, not the rest of you.”
“I know that. I also read the articles that say the families of your kind will be protected. So, you will go to America, and your new keepers will take the rest of us somewhere safe.”
Kopano pretended not to notice the way his mother said “your kind,” as if he was no longer Okeke, no longer Nigerian, no longer human.
It was more than a ten-hour drive north on the A22 to Zuma Rock, where the Loralite stone had grown and the United Nations had set up a headquarters. Kopano offered to take a turn behind the wheel, but his mother refused. She relaxed some once they left Lagos behind. They both did.
Kopano dozed off and awoke to the sound of hoofbeats. It was morning. A group of boys rode their horses on the side of the highway, racing their car, whooping and slapping riding crops against the flanks of their skinny mounts. Akuziem honked her horn in irritation and stepped on the gas until the jockeys fell behind them. They were in a rural part of the country that Kopano had never seen before. He had never even been out of Lagos. Once again, the reality of his situation dawned on him.
