“We time this right,” Santiago said, “and we’ll get more than some of them.”
However many we took out, we couldn’t get them all. That meant retaliation was all but guaranteed.
“We go our separate ways,” I announced. “That gives us four chances to locate Knox and Kimora and set our trap. Everyone remember where to go?” They gave me blank stares that halted just shy of asking if I was sure I knew where to go. “I may not have a super snoofer, but I have a decent memory. I can find my way back to the boulder. As long as I’m not expected to open it, we’re good.”
“I’ll handle that.” Wu grimaced. “Just get them there. I’ll do the rest.”
The edge in his tone made me wary. “Can you remote detonate?”
“It’s meant to be activated from the inside, as a last resort. I can set a countdown. There’s a thirty second delay to give the most people the best chance of escaping.”
“Can you beat the clock?” I gripped his arm, forced him to look at me. “This is not your fault. You get that, right? Don’t turn yourself into a roast duck for atonement’s sake.”
“The enclave is my family. They wouldn’t exist if not for me.” Remorse darkened his eyes. “I allowed them to flourish knowing this would happen one day.”
“And you took every precaution. They have multiple bunkers and multiple aboveground refuges, right?” With Wu’s analytical mind and who knows how many generations to prepare for this, he wouldn’t have stopped with one escape route. He would have mapped several. “You did your best by them.”
The tightness of his lips when he bent them into a smile told me he wasn’t convinced but appreciated my effort.
“You still have Ezra and Bruster to find,” I reminded him. “You can’t do that from a roasting pan.”
“It’s good to know you’ve got your priorities straight,” he teased, and I sensed his outlook brightening.
“You want to win?” I didn’t wait for him to answer. “Then we have to set all our pieces on the board. No one gets to sit out this round.”
“Be careful, Luce.” He cupped my cheek in his palm. “The only things the Malakhim want more than what they already possess are you and me.”
“Back at you.” I withdrew before Cole started grumbling, but he didn’t make a peep. Wisps of his truce with Wu held firm, which still puzzled me. “Don’t make me come in there after you.”
When he left, Santiago held my gaze for the length of two heartbeats, but whatever his message, I couldn’t interpret it. “I’ll text Miller and Portia with an update.”
He was gone before I could thank him.
That left Cole and me, and we had to get moving. The most I could offer him was a kiss that scorched my lips when he returned it with equal hunger and a whispered “I love you” that earned me a genuine smile.
Yep. I was a goner. Good thing I wasn’t prone to swooning, or I would be swaying on my feet after that lip lock.
Each glimpse into Cole’s heart reaffirmed my commitment that one day, when this was all over, I was going to spoil him until we both forgot how he looked wearing a frown. I couldn’t make amends for what Conquest had done to him, but I could give him the life he deserved. I could give him a home, a safe place to raise his daughter — technically, our daughter — and a lifetime of love with no strings attached.
We just had to get through this rough patch first. If you considered suffering the wrath of a godlike being hellbent on our destruction a rough patch.
Air whistled through my lungs as I sprinted through the trees in search of the Malakhim. With two hostages, they must have quit sweeping the area looking for their way in. They had one now. They just needed to see which of their keys to the kingdom turned first.
I almost stumbled over the first Malakhim, which was not a great sign. That meant I had pulled on the cold place to silence my footfalls without making a conscious decision to do so. It also meant I had my hands around his throat, snapping his neck, before my brain registered I had made the call on instinct.
Too bad the instinct wasn’t mine.
Scanning the area for signs of a partner, I found none. I was alone with the corpse.
A layer of ice kept me numb, insulated from what I had done with stone-cold resolve. Hunting and killing Drosera alongside Thom was one thing. This was … next level. Cold, precise, and nothing I could have pictured doing six months ago.
While I stood over the cooling body, I took a moment to measure what we were up against. What I saw didn’t reassure. The Malakhim were the embodiment of the angelic ideal. They might not be sporting halos, gold sandals, or togas, but this one had blond hair and dreamy blue eyes that were hazing over. He was built lean but tough, and his wings … Tears sprang to my eyes at how they crumpled under him, twisted and dirty.
That surge of emotion was all it took to catapult me out of the cold place and back into my own skin. I fretted over what exactly I was feeling, why this death had affected me so powerfully, and I pinned it down to a lifetime of Sundays spent in church gazing up at paintings of angelic hosts charging into battle.
They were supposed to be the good guys. They were supposed to be righteous and just. They were supposed to exemplify the best human qualities. Or us theirs.
The pang in my chest was a budding identity crisis I didn’t have time to indulge.
Angels were the bad guys. Full stop. I had to believe that, or else I had to accept we were the bad guys. And I couldn’t keep putting one foot in front of the other if I didn’t trust the path I had taken.
Edward Boudreau had raised me right. That much I knew without question. All I had to do was rely on my upbringing, and I would be fine.
Exhaling, I eased around the fallen angel. I had killed this one too fast for a warning call to go out thanks to the fact I hadn’t realized how cold I had gone until it was too late. I was burned out and grateful for it. Walking at a mostly human speed, with all the noise that came along with it, I figured it was the next best thing to shouting I’m over here, come and get me. Just a tad subtler so they didn’t suspect I was bait for the trap Wu was busy setting.
I didn’t have to wait long for a Malakhim to hear me lumbering and come investigate. This one was on foot too, a must considering the limbs overhead, but he flared his wings when our gazes clashed like he wanted nothing more than to rocket into the sky to report.
An almost silver aura surrounded him, and when he flared them a second time, tears sprang to my eyes.
Now, I had been raised Southern Baptist. Dad might prefer communing with God on open waters, usually with a fishing pole in his hand, but I had gotten my dose of religion on the weekends when I stayed with my aunt and uncle. Especially during the summers when they needed extra hands to help babysit as well as run the bible school camp.
But even then, I had never experienced such overwhelming awe, in church or out, that I was unable to raise a hand to protect myself when he took aim with his golden bow and sighted an arrow at my heart. Not until this very moment.
That’s when it hit me. Thankfully before an arrow got the chance.
Charun are all gifted in some way. They all possess some form of magic, for lack of a better explanation. This was his.
The urge to raise my arms, cry tears of joy, shout to the heavens. It was a manufactured effect, a manipulation. One Wu should have warned us about before letting us challenge the Malakhim.
Drawing on the cold place again so soon caused me to break out in a sweat, but finally, after salty beads of perspiration rolled into my eyes, I doused myself in frigid clarity. The shock to my system woke me from his thrall, and sensation flooded my limbs. My tears dried on my cheeks as I spun aside, hissing when the arrowhead grazed my forearm.
“That wasn’t very nice,” I snarled, weaving through trees faster than he could take aim.
“You’re a blight on this world,” he said, and even his voice held layers of compulsion. “It’s my duty to end the threat you pose to the good people who call thi
s terrene home.”
Calling me a blight was harsh, and another time it might have triggered more navel gazing about my innate goodness. Thankfully, what with all the running for my life and all, I had no time to dwell. Plus, the fact he was cued in to charun lingo, calling this world a terrene, gave me a foothold. These flighty bastards might think we’re their evil cousins, but that didn’t make them right. It made them victims of the same propaganda I fell prey to at times like these.
Believing you’re flawed, broken, or wrong was ten times easier than trusting you were perfect just the way you were or whole or right. Bad things always stick with us longer than the good. I don’t know if that’s a self-esteem problem or a human problem, but it’s true. The fact I hesitated, that I wondered, assured me I wasn’t the mindless monster this wannabe angel believed me to be.
“What about the threat you pose?” I challenged, snapping off a limb the length of my arm. “Do you really care whether humans live or die?”
Without hesitation, he kept the flurry of arrows coming. “Our duty is to protect them from the likes of you.”
That … was not an answer. Apparently he only came with preprogrammed responses.
“The likes of me? Really? That’s the playbook you’re reading from?” I kept pushing, diving deeper into the cold, letting the frostbite numb me to the nicks and scratches down my arms when he hit too close. Still, he didn’t call for reinforcements. He must want this kill as a feather in his cap. While arrogance was leading him by the nose, I had to push harder. “Who taught you to shoot? Ralphie Parker?”
“Who is this Ralphie Parker?”
“You’re posing as an angel, but you’ve never watched A Christmas Story?” I circled behind him using a burst of speed I never would have believed myself capable of and rammed the stick through his right eye, barely resisting the urge to quote the famous line about shooting your eye out. “You lose serious Christmas cheer points for that one.”
His gut-wrenching scream was music to my ears, and I leaned in to listen until his voice broke. That was how the next Malakhim scouts found me. Hunched over their comrade as he slid from my embrace, my fist clenching the stick gouging out his eye. The horror on their faces registered in a distant way, but I was too deep to swim to the surface.
From the rear, a Malakhim gleaming with power stepped forward. “You will die for this, foul creature.”
Foul creature? Ouch. “Now you’re just being mean.”
I shoved the male in my arms forward, all but throwing him at them, and ran.
This lost to my charun side, I didn’t have to wait on my brain to process feedback from my eyes to point me in the right direction. Vision didn’t come into play, neither did memory. I wouldn’t even call it scent recognition as much as a knowing, like a compass pointing in my head, and all I had to do was follow.
Listening to my instincts, I led the Malakhim on a chase through the forest, careful not to run in a straight line. As much as I wanted this done, I didn’t want them to shy away from what we had planned. Halfway there, I spotted Cole several yards away, a contingent on his heels. On my other side, I spied Santiago with more than both of our numbers put together. He had a talent for pissing people off, so I wasn’t surprised, honestly.
Ahead of us, the rendezvous point was made distinguishable by the gaping hole in its side. Wu had done his job. Now we had to hope the Malakhim would assume they were herding us and not the other way around.
Santiago pulled ahead and sprinted for the darkness. I slowed to give him enough time, but it was going to get ugly. The stragglers on his tail would soon notice me, and the Malakhim hot on my heels, and understand they had been played. We just had to pray we had all gotten out by then.
I plunged down the sloped tunnel mouth, cursing under my breath when I had no choice but to run into the back of the Malakhim ahead of me. He turned, gilded dagger raised, and aimed for my heart. I spun aside, hitting the nearest wall and cracking the back of my skull, but then Cole was there.
“Miller and Portia are keeping the Malakhim confined to the tunnel.”
There was no time to check my phone to see if I had missed any texts or calls. “They’re here?”
“Yes.” He gripped my arm and dragged me behind him. “We have to get out.”
“How are we going to get through that?” Dozens of Malakhim clogged the entrance. “They’re not going to shuffle aside and let us pass.”
“Luce,” Wu hissed from across the room.
There was no time for second guesses. I used Cole’s grip on me to haul him in that direction. Santiago, who had skewered the Malakhim who tried to stab me, paused to steal the golden weapon then sprinted after us.
“Hurry.” Wu led us into a narrow tunnel that sealed with a metallic clang, alerting the Malakhim to our escape. “We have twenty-five seconds.”
Heart thundering in my ears, I held onto Cole for all I was worth and stuck to Wu’s heels like sheer will could save us all. I would have grabbed for Santiago too if there had been room. Coterie bonds were tight, and the fear of losing even one of the guys, let alone Maggie and Portia, constricted my chest.
Through the rough-hewn maze, we twisted and turned on an upward incline that ended in another steel door with a complicated mechanism sealing it closed from the outside.
Just like in the movies, an electronic voice began counting down behind us.
Five.
“Wu.” I pounded on his back. “Get us out of here.”
Four.
The locks clicked, and the partition glided open.
Three.
Sunlight streamed in, hitting my face, and I rushed forward blindly, dragging all three males with me toward the trees in the hopes that putting enough trunks between us and the blast might protect us.
Two.
Shadows closed over our heads, tree limbs stretching over us.
“Please be okay,” I panted out a plea to the universe to protect Miller, Maggie, and Portia. “Please be okay, please be okay.”
The explosion juddered the ground beneath us, and we fell in a heap of limbs. Cole crawled over me, using his muscular body to shield me from the blast. Santiago was thrown wide. I couldn’t see where he landed. Wu crawled to me on knees and forearms and curled against us, his arms protecting my head, his face inches from mine. I was staring into his eyes when the first tree broke across Cole’s back, when one of the limbs pierced Wu through the chest, pinning him to the ground. Blood frothed on his lips, but he didn’t budge. He had kept me safe, they both had, and it made me queasy how quick they were to sacrifice for me.
“Cole?” I had an eyeful of his chest when I turned my head, but that was it. “Speak to me. Cole?”
“I can’t … move.”
Grateful tears sprang to my eyes. “You’re alive.” I kissed every bit of skin I could reach. “Thank God.” And anyone else who was listening.
“Santiago is twitching.” He cut his eyes to the left. “He hasn’t opened his eyes yet, but he’s breathing.”
“He’s too big of an asshat to die.” I prayed that was true. Portia would kill him if he kicked the bucket.
Wet rasps at my elbow punctured my bubble of relief as I focused on my partner.
“Hold on, Adam.” I wriggled until I got an arm free then stroked his hair. “The others will be here soon.” Unless they were trapped under hundreds of pounds of debris too. “Did you get Knox and Kimora to safety?”
Wu parted his lips, but no sound escaped them.
“Adam.” I wiped my thumb across his cheek. “Stay with me. It’s going to be okay.”
“Foreign matter slows the healing process,” Cole rasped. “We need to get the wood out of him.”
“How are we going to do that?” It was all I could do to reach him for comfort.
“This is going to hurt.” Cole lowered a portion of his weight onto me. “Can you handle it?”
“Save him.” I could deal with the pain. Plus, there were worse ways to go than being
squished beneath Cole. “Ready when you are.”
In my head, the press of Cole’s body against mine was sexy. The reality was he was a lot of male, and there were at least two fallen trees crossed at his spine, adding their weight to his bulk. I hadn’t realized until he shifted his efforts elsewhere how much he had been shielding me.
Groaning, I did my best not to thrash as my lungs squished flatter than pancakes. Think crepes.
Planting his palms on the ground, he leveraged the trees off him long enough for me to suck in a breath. Switching all that strain onto his left arm, he reached across with his right and gripped the limb protruding from Wu’s back.
Wu and I sucked in matching breaths, and when Cole’s elbow buckled, and he slammed into me, driving the wood deeper into Wu’s body, we both screamed.
Several minutes later, after we had all caught our breath, I had to shoulder being the bearer of bad news. “We have to try again.”
Wu blinked slowly, a sign I took as agreement.
“Oh no, Mistress.”
The buzzing in my head must be getting bad if I was hearing words interspersed in the noise.
“The tree,” the same distant voice cried. “Move it.”
Cole shuddered above me, the press of his body lightening.
“Now the other,” a female ordered with a cat’s scream in her voice. “Lift it off him.”
This time when Cole rocked forward, he kept going, rising over me, allowing me to suck down air.
“Luce,” he rasped. “Can you move?”
“Gimme a … minute.” I gulped oxygen until my lungs burned. “Just … need to … catch … my breath.”
“Wu is injured,” he called to our rescuers. “He needs emergency medical treatment.”
Shifting the trees off Cole meant Wu was no longer staked to the ground. But whereas Cole and I were attempting to get to our feet, he continued lying there in a spreading stain that wet the pine needles beneath him.
Pretty sure I had a fractured rib or two, I gingerly picked my way to him. “You can’t go around claiming you’re hard to kill if you let one measly tree defeat you.”
Eyes gone brown and dull without a hint of gold, he whispered, “Not … dead … yet.”
Rise Against: A Foundling novel (The Foundling Series) Page 11
