Finally, the opening in the fence was big enough for us to slip through. Before we did, John chucked a small rock past the guard on the left, which made both guards look in opposite directions away from us. We used that fifteen second distraction to slip through the fence then creep across the twenty open yards to the nearest building where we hoped the prisoners were being kept.
John tossed a second rock he’d stowed in his pocket.
“What was that?” one of the door guards muttered.
“Dunno, but I heard it too,” the other guard said, looking around. They took a couple of steps away from the door, splitting up to look around the sides of the building.
I ran across the rocky, hard packed dirt to the door, grateful my shoes had quiet, flexible soles. As I reached for the doorknob, I held my breath. I had no clue how to pick a lock. Thankfully the guards seemed to have put all their faith in the drugs and their guns to keep the prisoners contained inside, because the door was unlocked. We slipped inside then spread out.
The long metal building’s curved roof and walls had no windows and only the one door we’d entered through, so we could safely turn on the flashlights for the first time. The small beams cut through the pitch black to reveal how the building was filled with row after row of cots, each one holding a comatose patient covered in a single thin blanket. We shone the lights on the prisoners’ faces in order to find some of the healers who had volunteered their skills in the woods tonight before being caught by the soldiers.
While Mike and John started detoxing a few of those healers, I searched cot after cot. But so far Tarah was nowhere in sight.
Was I wrong about the soldiers assuming she was a witch? Had they taken her somewhere else instead?
Muttering a curse, I found Mike and John as they worked separately on detoxing adult healers.
“Is it working?” I whispered to Mike.
“Yeah, but it takes awhile,” Mike said, even as the man whose wrist he held started to wake up.
“Have you seen Tarah anywhere?”
Mike shook his head.
When I asked John, he gave the same answer.
While Mike moved on to detox another healer to add to our ranks, I filled in the still drowsy man on what was going on. The longer I talked, the more alert the man became. After a minute or two, he scrubbed his hands over his face, dragged himself to his feet, then lumbered over to join the detoxing efforts.
I told everyone not to detox the younger kids. The drugs would keep them in their beds, quiet and safely out of the way, while we took care of the rest of the grownup prisoners and eventually the guards. Some of the parents didn't like it, but at least they seemed to understand.
As we neared the farthest end of the building, I spotted the mother, still holding her dead baby even in her sleep, a crowd of healers forming around her cot. One of them reached down for her wrist.
“No, don't. She shouldn't have to see…” I couldn't say the rest.
Thankfully they understood. A woman who looked like she could be the mother's sister reached out, tears on her cheeks winking from the indirect flashlight beams, and gently eased the baby from the mother's arms. She wrapped the body in a sheet stolen from an empty bed, then tucked the bundle back into the mother's arms.
I could hear faint crying in the crowd, someone sniffling, men clearing their throats. But I couldn't look away from that tiny bundle.
“Hayden,” Mike whispered at my shoulder. “We found Tarah.”
The only words that could move me at that moment.
“Is she okay?” My gaze snapped to his face. I was half afraid of what expression I might find there.
He nodded, a tired half smile twisting his face.
I followed him to the back of the building.
She looked like an angel in her sleep, her ponytail loose so her thick dark hair made a tangled cloud against her cheeks. Mike picked up her limp wrist, and my gut knotted. I'd never wished for a special ability more than I did in that moment as I had to wait for someone else to fix her. I should be the one who was healing her. I’d promised to protect her and failed.
Her eyelids fluttered open. Mike was closer to her head, but somehow she looked right at me instead.
My breath caught in my lungs. “Hello, Sleeping Beauty.”
She rolled her eyes but smiled anyway.
Mike moved on to the next prisoner.
Tarah struggled to sit up. I slid an arm around her shoulders and helped her, then ended up hugging her in relief, burying my face and a shaking hand in her hair. “Told you I’d come back for you.”
“What took you so long?” she whispered in my ear.
“Oh, you know how bad traffic on the interstate gets,” I joked. “That and facing down my father about being an outcast.”
She leaned back to search my face with wide eyes. “You, or him?”
“Both, actually.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “And how’d it go?”
I scowled. “Not great. Turns out he’s a total hypocrite. The jackass actually thinks he’s helping everyone by trying to find a way to permanently suppress our magic and make us ‘normal’ again. And remind me to tell you about the Clann sometime later.”
“Okay.” She shook her head. “That sucks about his lying to you all this time.” She sighed. “Well, at least I’m not the only one around here with delusional parents. Speaking of…did you find my dad yet?”
“Not yet, but we’re not done either.”
“Hayden!” John hissed from three cots over. “This guy’s not drugged, but he’s not waking up. What do we do?”
“Is it my dad?” Tarah asked me, her eyes wide with a combination of hope and fear.
Tarah
I tried to stand up too fast and nearly fell back on the cot again as the blood rushed from my head. The drugs they dished out around here were some seriously potent stuff. Hayden helped steady me, then tucked one of my hands through the bend of his elbow so I could hold onto him for balance.
A thin blonde woman overheard us and stumbled over, wobbly from either just waking up or maybe too much healing tonight. “I’m a healer. Let me check him.” I didn’t recognize her. She must not have been part of the Tyler outcasts’ community.
I tried to move faster, but the numbness in my feet had turned into a pins and needles sensation, making every step excruciating as the blood flow returned to my lower limbs. By the time Hayden and I got to the man’s cot and could tell that it was definitely my dad, the woman had already knelt on the floor beside him and pressed both her hands on his temples.