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CHAPTER 1

Kai sat cross-legged on the narrow bed, holding a ginger kitten in one hand and trying to wrap a bandage around its leg with the other. The creature squirmed in his grip, kicked the bandage out of Kai's hand. It unrolled across the floor of his room — the top level of an abandoned, condemned building that had slipped through a crack in the system and had been forgotten in a tangled mess of zoning disagreements and red tape. Kai called it home. It was broken and dirty, yet to Kai, it was more home than the cold hostel at St. Gregory's would ever be. When the term ended and others went home to loving families, he came here. This kitten and its sister were currently his only loving family.

"Gah, hold still." He hooked the bandage with his toes and foot-walked the end close enough to pick up with his free hand. The kitten's leg felt normal, but Kai knew otherwise. He could see the problem, a hairline fracture in one of Riff's leg bones. It needed to be strapped. Getting the kitten to agree was another matter altogether. There were no glowing tips on how to do that.

He hoped that fixing the kitten might dilute some of the guilt he felt at letting Zapster get taken from school yesterday. Kai had been tested first and somehow managed to throw the test. He was nearly back through the school gates when he saw Zapster being pushed into a second van, painted black with windows tinted too dark to see through. Zap had caught his eye for a moment, grinned, and shown him a double thumbs-up. The door slid shut and the van had left. So Pete had it and they were taking him, and it was too late to go back and change their minds.

Kai tucked the cat upside down between his legs, holding firm but gentle, long enough to wrap and tie off the bandage. The glowing image turned gold then winked out, and he knew the fracture was on its way to being fixed.

This Affinity, seeing the invisible — it worked on inanimate things as well. He'd diagnosed a broken microwave once when he was nine. He could see the faulty diode glowing like a Christmas tree and mentioned it to Phil, the caretaker at St. Gregory's School. The man was amazed but Kai called it a lucky guess. By then he knew better than to tell anyone how he knew things. So he'd quietly high-fived himself and left it at that.

Kai picked up his guitar and played a chord, looking for distraction from beating himself up. Seconds later Riff was on his lap, purring and catching his fingers each time he plucked a string. With feline accompaniment, the song, which sounded good in his head, came out of his guitar like some reggae/country mash-up. Charming. The tune had been teasing him for weeks, lurking in his mind just beyond where he could grab it and connect it to strings and fingers. The kitten was not helping. Neither was the thought of Pete.

Kai set the guitar on its stand. One at a time, he took down the boards covering a wall of windows. Pale morning dipped into the room. Light warmed his face. He closed his eyes and felt it seep into him.

He hadn't told Pete, but yesterday wasn't his first testing at St. Gregory's. It was his third. After his first positive, they'd taken him aside, dangling a carrot of advanced education, all sponsored. As much as it made sense logically, he had declined their offer. He was the only one ever known to show up at school after testing positive.

The second positive round had been conducted by a higher ranking recruiter, a striking woman persuasive in speech and manner, sophisticated and charming. The offer she'd made had been tempting: a home and food. Kai's resolve had nearly cracked. Yet in the pit of his belly, demanding to be heard over the hungry growls, there remained a stubborn ball of no that simply wouldn't dissolve.

It was after his third positive test that their gloves had come off and the Recruiters grew teeth, demanding his acquiescence. That was the cracking point that made leaving school easy. The raw patches in the crease of his arm still stung, skin torn by their sticky, taped-on monitors being ripped off. Most kids were tested once, but with him they kept trying.

They suspected he had Affinity, but he wouldn't let them find it. Affinity or not, he would not be recruited.

But now they had Pete. His chest stung. If Pete had gone first, would he have allowed himself to be taken so that he could try to help his friend? He'd never know. There were only two things he knew for sure–he'd wouldn't see Pete again and he couldn't go back to St. Greg's and pretend everything was normal. Monday was two days away, but he'd already made up his mind.

As the sun rose, the brightness increased, filling the room with light. He pulled the crumpled envelope out of his pocket, the same one he'd wrestled from Pete. Smoothing it on his chest, he hesitated before taking the note out and letting the envelope drop. He knew it word-for-word, each period and comma. His steel-string-calloused fingers felt for the thin folds anyway. He'd read it so often, the words blurred and lost meaning. He found himself absorbing the graceful slant of the l's, the deep curve of the y's. Few wrote in cursive these days, and fewer took such obvious care. His fingers traced the lines as if he could uncover the identity of the writer. Who are you?

It was nearly time.

He refolded the pages and returned them to the pocket of his jeans. The reflection looking back at him from the shard of mirror hanging from a nail in the wall looked tired. Old-running-shoe tired. And skinny. His bones had outgrown his muscles the last few months in a spurt that left his sleeves dangling an inch above his wrist bones.

"What will she think? Hey, Riff?"

Riff said nothing to make Kai feel better, so he put the kitten down and ran his hands over the stubborn tips of his spiked hairs. Would gel flatten them? Probably not. The bristles poked through his fingers all over his scalp like miniature soldiers. Not that he had gel anyway. A smudge of purple paint stained his T-shirt. It had been three weeks since he'd painted the walls downstairs and after three washes, he'd given up trying to budge the stain. Maybe he should change. A tinge of rebellion sparked in his belly. For what? Purple was a good colour for a new rebel movement. At least the shirt was clean.

Whatever. It didn't matter.

One last finger-run through his prickles and he eyed himself grimly in the mirror.

If he had gone back to de-hedgehog, things might have been different. But he didn't.

As always, the front door stuck part way to closing. He kicked it and jerked the handle up without a second thought. It clicked into place, and he padlocked it. All the way down three flights of stairs, his mind churned around the letter in his pocket. Thumbing earphones into place, he selected "random" and let fate decide the soundtrack for the day. Sisters of Mercy, Flood.

Brooding swirls of grey music filled his head as he stepped off the pavement, and then saw the bus. Too late to turn back. It rammed into him.

An avalanche of blinding agony smacked through his body and he crumpled to the pavement like a bag of bones.

He floated in heavy blackness. Fiery pain punched through in flashes.

Screaming sirens.

Morphine.

Silence.

Kai's toes stung. Over and over. As if he was at the mercy of some giant seamstress intent on stitching his toes together. He kicked and felt the breeze of wings flapping. The pain stopped.

Forcing himself up on one elbow, he squinted. A threadbare crow eyed him. As big as a turkey. The black monster hopped closer and stretched toward his bleeding bare feet for another nibble.

He kicked at its soccer-ball body in disgust. Foot met feathers and it rolled through the sand. The bird regained its stance, squawking. It glared at him, beady eyes twitching.

Heat baked all around him like a giant oven, cooking his insides, yet there was no sign of the sun. Just thick blackness pushed back by a fiery glow in the distance. Strength sapped, he cranked himself upright. The horizon tilted at a crazy angle and his head spun. He'd had weird dreams before, but this one ...

Desert sand stretched away from him on all sides as far as his eyes could see into the gloom, an endless shimmering monotony broken only by the crow. If he dreamed of falling into a giant oven that cooked his insides, would he die in real life? Kai snorted, he had no desire to find out. Better move now or become a desert omelette. Swallowing back bile, he got to his feet and tried to find his bearings.

A scream sliced through the silence.

The sound of it snaked goose bumps down his spine. More voices joined. An agonizing swell of howling to his left, building in intensity, rolling toward him. It assaulted his eardrums — ceaseless and hypnotic, an endless cacophony of agony. It irritated him.

"Shut up already!"

He stumbled on jelly legs across the wasteland in the direction of the sound. Each step sizzled as his bare, crow-nibbled feet pressed into the sand. Where were his shoes? He felt heavy, as if someone had cranked up the pull of gravity. If not for the pain in his soles, he'd be laughing. Trust his brain to cook up such drama.

This doesn't even feel like my body. What a stupid dream.

Scrambled thoughts ran amok in his heat-baked mind.

This is not real.

If it's not real, why is sweat running down my back?

Keep moving, maybe there's a cliff to fall off. That will wake me up.

Gotta keep moving.

A dark patch in the distance. He quickened his pace. The sand sucked at his feet, tiring his legs. The patch grew as he got closer and he squinted to make out details. Smoke poured off a midnight-black structure as tall as four houses. He was close enough to smell the burning.

Black gates.

Burning black gates.

Detached, somewhat mesmerized, Kai kept going. Smokey clouds billowed thick, so dense they soon blocked off his view. A moment's relief from the crimson glare, then suffocating closeness.

This is so messed up. He couldn't stop himself, he kept walking. Burning blackness filled his mind and heart. Sing-song death filled his ears. Rancid smoke clung to his taste-buds.

There was no turning back now. He was drawn like a dog on a leash.

She came out of nowhere — a girl shimmering in a light that shook him from his daze.

"You fool! What are you thinking? It's not your time."

She grabbed his tender arm with a fury that made him wince. Torn between the hypnosis of the flames and this all too real bully-of-a-female, Kai froze.

As if trigged by their presence, the black gate cracked open and thick smoke rolled out. Tendrils of it curled toward them, slow but deliberate. Living, hungry. Screams from inside clawed at his eardrums.

"DarKounds are coming. We've got to get to the river. Come on!" Something in the girl's voice turned his belly to water.

Then the howling began.

His blood turned to ice. You can't run with ice in your veins. He stared, perplexed. The tiny, shiny girl turned back to him and swung her arm. The back of her hand connected with his face, rattling his teeth.

"There's no time. Move." Her slap and the fear in her eyes unlocked his legs. He ran.

Thick tendrils of blackness kept pace alongside them. He heard the pounding of clawed feet. Heightened senses picked up snarling, breathing, whining. It all sounded doggish enough to be the darKound things the girl was so scared of. Pain danced across his cheek where she'd slapped him. She pulled ahead of him now. The blackness edged ahead, hemming him in, cutting him off from her, from escape.

Kai wanted to laugh, but adrenalin pumped through his veins and the girl's fear was rubbing off on him. He ran, feet bleeding, burning.

You can never run fast enough.

Nimble and quick, the shiny girl was moving further away.

Give up.

Leg muscles screaming, chest heaving, and desperate for oxygen, he ran.

Give in.

Surrender.

Don't fight what is stronger than you.

There was no way he could outrun the blackness.

Accept it.

Running is futile.

He slowed, time to stop this running away nonsense.

Then a shimmery silver thought: You'll let a girl outrun you?

"No! Heck no!"

Energy pulsed through his thighs, his feet flew. As if sensing his burst, the darKounds ran faster. He heard it in the rhythm of their footfall.

What was a darKound anyway? Curiosity nearly made him stop. Kai shoved it aside and focused on the girl. Every step took him closer and then he was alongside. Running apace — the blackness matching every step.

A silver sliver slashed through the barren terrain — the river! A thick bank of trees lined the opposite side. They hit the water running. Icy cold seared his burnt skin. The shock was too much, his limbs turned to lead. Someone flicked the switch in his head and blackness took him.

* * *

He came to lying on his side in cool grass, coughing up water. The shiny girl sat within arm's reach, her knees drawn up. Her inner light shone so bright that it poured off her in waves, setting bark and grass ablaze with a pure light, completely opposite to the smoking black gates that she'd pulled him from. Each place the light touched seemed to dance with vibrant life. He lay still, unwilling to break the moment, drinking in beauty unlike anything he'd ever seen or felt. It was like being taken apart, rearranged and put back together in a whole new way. Then the moment popped like a pin-pricked bubble. She was glaring at him.

"You nearly drowned."

No kidding.

"First, you go strolling off to the gates of the Darklands. Is it not enough that your body is dying in hospital? Don't you know that when you pass between those gates here, that's it. No get out of jail free pass. No do-overs. Gone forever. And then! If strolling off to the Darklands isn't enough, you dive in the river even though you can't swim. What were you thinking? If you have some sort of death wish, you should tell me now and I'll push you off a cliff, finish the job, and save us both a whole lot of trouble." She gave him no time to answer. Getting to her feet, she threw something at him. A jumpsuit. Shimmery grey and soft to the touch.

Kai caught the jumpsuit and shuddered. The fabric felt clammy, cold as frog skin. He didn't like frogs. "I can too swim." Even to his own ears he sounded three years old and sulky.

"Put that on. You can't be seen like that," the girl pointed at his chest, wrinkling her nose. "You'll have every darKound swimming the river to get to you."

He followed where her finger pointed and swore. In the chase he'd managed to rip a hole in his purple-stained T-shirt. The triangular bit of chest visible through the tear was no longer a healthy flesh colour, but translucent, shifting like the rainbow patterns on a bubble. What? He pulled up the hem, and his mind swam. He was completely hollow. Empty. No heart, lungs, veins. Just dark emptiness that swirled and pulsed.

He dropped his shirt as if it had stung him and held his hand up to the light. He swallowed hard, feeling the dry bread that had been breakfast queuing at the back of his throat. He could see the girl clearly through his fingers. It made him think of the plastic human figure he'd found in the cupboard in Biology class at St. Gregory's. Anatomy meant nothing to him, but he spent many break times taking out all the organs and creating macabre faces with them that he would sketch and give to Lizzie. Lizzie, who sat next to him in Bio, who always wore pigtails, and smelled like rain. Lizzie, who had won his heart because she always carried a frog in her pocket. She was the coolest thing, yet she didn't like his drawings. Maybe that's why he didn't like frogs. It hadn't made any sense to him back then.

And his hollow body made no sense to him now. Before his mind snapped, Kai shut his eyes and felt for the zipper on the suit she'd given him. The jumpsuit slipped easily over his wet clothes. He felt a tingle through his wrists and neck and held up his hand. It was normal, pink-tinged-blue from the icy water, faint veins criss-crossed his palms. Relief buckled his knees and he slumped at the base of a tree.

The girl sighed, "He built the suits to make your spiritual body look more like the body you're used to. He knows us well. Human brains don't take to being messed with. We need to get moving. It's not safe here."

"Where is here? And those gates. All that screaming. This place is a riot. Not normal, I tell you." He remembered the letter in his pocket. "Listen, I'm gonna be late. Wake me up, will you? There is somewhere I need to be."

She regarded him with cool eyes, frustration laced with sympathy. And a dash of something else. Irritation?

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Excerpted from "Affinity"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Dianne J. Wilson.
Excerpted by permission of Pelican Ventures, LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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