To Survive without the Guardians

Chapter 14: Tattletale

"So, do you think you can do that?" Duran asked Matt right after Haven left. "Make weapons?"

"Yes. Do you want to help?"

Duran shook his head. "No thanks. I don't have time this weekend, and we really need them soon. Garvit can help you if he wants, though."

"I'll be reading," the redhead said. "I'm gonna start going through all these books."

Angelia frowned. "So are the rest of us going home, then? Do you think we should?"

"At some point your parents are gonna want you back," Duran replied. "You have that scythe if you need to use it."

"Well...okay..." The girl looked uneasy.

"Come on, let's go," Duran said, and the two of them left.

"This is the book you're looking for," Garvit told Matt, and the latter turned around to find the former holding out a hefty gray one labeled The Basics of Weaponry.

"Uh, thanks," Matt said, not meeting his gaze, and he took the book from him. What was there, like, a thousand pages in that thing? What all of it did he absolutely have to read? They needed weapons now!

"You should start."

"I know." Matt sat down in the corner farthest from the desk Garvit was taking a seat at studiously. The fair-skinned boy had an ancient-looking book titled Peculiar Creations across the Years in his hands. Matt wasn't sure it would be of much use to them.

He then opened his own book to the first page, containing more diagrams than how-to's, and began.

*}{/*}{/*}{/*

Fortunately for Haven, her parents didn't seem to notice her new clothes as she hurried upstairs to her bedroom. She didn't even remove her coat until she had shut and locked the door.

She sat on her bed and looked at the book in her lap. It wasn't too thick, fortunately. However, age had worn it down, and she nearly ripped the first page when she opened it up.

She had a plan. It didn't seem right to kill the Fearlings as the Guardians had done in the books. She had done it herself to save her friends when she had had no other choice, but she wanted to have one now that she had the time to give it to herself. The wary mood from the battle had mostly worn off, so she was willing to take a chance. She couldn't just peacefully fend off the Fearlings and expect them to go away on their own, however. That she did know. She had to stop them completely somehow. And what better way was there to do it than by turning them back into the children they once were?

Maybe, in one of those cabinets, there was something she could use, probably in combination with other things. If she found out where the first Fearlings had come from in the first place and the exact process that occurred when people were turned into them, maybe she could figure out how to reverse it and turn them back.

*}{*}{*}{*

Monday afternoon, when Haven got off the bus at her house that day, she still hadn't heard from Matt or seen any Fearlings. Perhaps the latter were preparing for something dangerous. Something big. Something that could bring the Lunar Eclipse Resistance down.

Another thing that bugged her a little was that her normal friends hadn't asked her to do anything with them on the Sunday afternoon following the incident at the mall, something she hadn't expected, but they had seemed fine at school, not angry at her for being with other people or anything like that. However, she should've known something was off.

"Haven Avery!" her dad exclaimed the second the teen entered the house. "Your mom heard you've been hanging out with a bad influence lately. You're grounded for two weeks. Hand over your phone." Haven's gray eyes widened in shock, rage, and fear, but she said nothing at first. She should've known that Lauryn and/or Johnsie would tell someone about her and Matt, especially since she had referenced an "attack," which probably reminded them of her scar.