Destroyed

by Madeline Dyer

  But then a female Lost Spirit is in front of me. That way, she says, pointing with a thin arm.

  I look, and there’s darkness where she indicates, but then it lifts, reveals the mouth of a cave.

  We mostly work as joined beings now. This world cannot support many of us operating as individuals for long. It is greatly safer for us to band together.

  They can’t operate as individuals for long? Was that why Three disappeared so quickly?

  We are the Lost Ones who remember. Ask our leader for what you desire.

  Leader?

  A dark taste fills my mouth. A leader? The most powerful of these spirits? But spirits, the Lost Souls, are dangerous.

  I gulp in air too quickly, feel panicky, imagine this leader—the biggest, most dangerous spirit—feeding from me, killing me. My hands shake. The air feels too heavy. I don’t need their permission. I know that. I could control them.

  The Enhanced control.

  The Untamed do not.

  I don’t even know who says it—whether it’s a Sarr inside me or a spirit here. Or even just my thoughts. Everything’s the same, and everything feels tense.

  I glance at Corin, then I step forward.

  Just her!

  I turn, see spirits have cut me off from Corin. My mouth dries.

  “Don’t hurt him,” I say.

  Don’t give us a reason to.

  It sounds like a challenge, and it makes me even more nervous. Trusting them like this is a risk.

  I take a deep breath, then I head into the cave.

  The walls are illuminated in a bright blue light, give the stones an iridescent feel. There’s the sound of water somewhere nearby. The whole thing reminds me of the cave I saw Vala Sarr, the first Seer, in.

  My steps make little sound as I head in deeper. It gets colder and colder.

  Then I see a figure, right at the back of the cave. He—I think it’s a he—blends into the cave’s colors so well, and I wonder how long he’s been in sight, watching me. Just this ethereal figure.

  You’ve come to seek us for your own benefit, he says. You want us to fight for you. You want to control us.

  I nod, press my hands together.

  His body seems to glow brighter. You’re asking permission, interesting, when you could just force us. But you did not ask permission of those of us who’d degenerated. You controlled them, had them carry out your wishes, with no thought as to what they wanted to do. We are all one, though we are many, and we know all. He eyes me severely. Are they less human, less worthy? Do they deserve to be controlled just because they are in more pain, have lost their original forms?

  I shake my head. “No… I… I’m sorry. I… I just want your help.”

  Sorry? he shouts, and the word booms around me.

  I flinch and look around, expect to see others in here, that they’ve followed me in.

  But they haven’t.

  It’s just me and him.

  I press my elbows in, suddenly feel like I’m taking up too much space, and I wait. Wait as the Lost Soul assesses me, as he steps closer. His eyes bulge, seem to get too big, and they both look human and not…something else. His lips peel back—such thin lips—and his teeth look too soft. Like they’re made of jelly, like they can’t possibly do any damage. But a strong sense of badness radiates from them. A promise.

  And what about the one you killed?

  The one I killed? I swallow hard. The spirit who attacked Elf?

  “I was protecting my people. I’m sorry.”

  Your people should’ve been more careful.

  I nod.

  We will do it, he says at last. I will have all of us come to you when you call us. Every single Lost Soul with the capability of fighting, who is not otherwise engaged in the safety of the Untamed, will be available. We will come, we will fight for you, under your command and direction, using your energy to sustain us, to fuel us—on one condition.

  He moves his head from side to side, and I wait. My heart pounds, and I feel sick. My stomach’s empty, but it may as well be full with how it’s churning.

  The spirit smiles, showing more of his teeth. It’s as if he knows how uncomfortable it makes me.

  You set us free. All of us.

  I take a step forward. “Free?”

  You will send us to the New World before your demise. You’ve made this world worse—made our pain greater, made it so we cannot operate individually for long. Send us to a better place. Send us to the New World, where we should have always been.

  My eyes widen. The New World—I don’t even know where it is, how to get there, how to send people there.

  Does it still even exist, given the Dream Land was destroyed? But it has to, the Sarrs inside me are also there. If it had gone too, they’d have said something, wouldn’t they?

  The spirit moves closer, hovers in front of me.

  Do we have a deal?

  I nod, know I shouldn’t say the words because I don’t know how to do it. But what else can I do?

  “We have a deal.”

  “They’re on side,” I tell Corin as we walk away. The spirits are all watching, I can feel it. “They’ll do it. They’ll come when I call, all of them who can.”

  I take a deep breath, swallow with difficulty, wonder how I can send them to the New World. And whether I have enough energy to fuel them all, feed them adequately, so they can carry out my commands.

  We will help too, the Sarrs say.

  “So why are we walking away?” Corin asks. “Don’t we need to stay with them?”

  “They’ll come when I call,” I repeat.

  But will it be on their own accord? Or just their leader controlling them? Is that any better than me commanding them in the first place?

  Corin nods. “Right. Okay.”

  I look at him and wonder whether he realizes he won’t die now, because none of the Untamed will, because we can eradicate the Enhanced without doing the killing ourselves. I wonder if he’s realized what that means for us, that we may have changed things, that he may not be in Death’s realm with me. And what will happen to Siora and Quinn?

  He sees me looking. “What do we do now?”

  I stretch my neck, twist my head to one side, then the other. “I need to body-share with Raleigh.”

  “Body-share?” Corin shakes his head. “I thought we were both going there? All of us, the spirits included?”

  “We are. But not yet.”

  He looks at me, prompting me.

  “The time needs to be right. It’s the Section we need to target first. We need to call the spirits in when there’s a Section meeting. If we can wipe out them first, when they’re all together, we can destabilize the Enhanced. Make it easier to kill them if they’ve got no leadership telling them what to do.”

  But the thought of killing any of them doesn’t make me feel good, to have lives taken, by me—even if the spirits will be doing the actual killing. I think of the Stone Seers, feel my shadow grow heavier.

  But you’ll be saving humanity.

  But I can take away their addiction, have the same outcome…

  No, you already realized you can’t save them all that way. That many beetles would destroy you before you’d saved them all. The war would never end.

  I squirm. But I did it once. It has to mean something. Surely I can’t just write it off because I know I can’t save all the Enhanced that way?

  I could save some.

  Choose who lives and who dies?

  I am a Seer of Death.

  “And you’ve got to body-share to sort this?” Corin asks.

  I nod. “I need to find out when the next Section meeting is.”

  Corin makes a noise deep in his throat. “But body-sharing with Raleigh seems like it’s just asking for trouble.”

  I smile a little. “You think staging a huge attack on the Enhanced isn’t?”

  He looks away.

  “Trust me, okay?”

  “You know what you’re doing?”
He raises his eyebrows, and his gaze becomes even more sincere.

  I nod. I don’t, but I feel in control, and it’s almost the same thing.

  But there’s something else too—confidence. It swells inside me, and I wonder if this is what Raleigh always feels like, because before, it was always on his terms whenever we met. He tracked me, found me, used Jed to bind me to him, had me kidnapped, kept me imprisoned. He was in charge.

  But not this time.

  He’s not going to know what’s coming.

  “Okay,” Corin says. “You can still body-share without Raleigh knowing though, can’t you?”

  I think of the last time, how Raleigh spoke directly to me. He knew I was there, but that was only because of the power I was using, how I was taking his powers.

  This time I’m really going to be passive.

  I nod. I hope so.

  Corin doesn’t say anything.

  We walk a little way until we find a fairly dry spot, then I lie down. Corin sits next to me. Still not saying anything. His eyes hold a degree of sadness in them, and I refuse to let myself look into them for long.

  Raleigh’s easy to find, just like before, and—

  Food.

  I smell it, see it, taste it, feel a gnawing in my stomach. I can’t remember how long it’s been since I last ate…too long….

  My heart rate increases.

  No. Stay calm, stay in control.

  I distance myself, have to, so I’m not as in sync with him. It’s the only way.

  Raleigh shovels a forkful of potato toward his mouth. The gravy on it is shiny, so glossy his face is reflected in it, two vortexes from his mirrors.

  I wait and wait, wait for him to finish eating, trying not to taste it, and it’s agonizing.

  Just disconnect. Come back later.

  But what’s to say Raleigh’s going to talk, later, about when the next Section meeting will be? It was futile thinking I could so easily find out. I was hoping for too much, thinking things would fall into place now we’ve got a way to attack them: now the spirits will do the killing.

  But the world doesn’t work like that.

  Just because I’ve got the spirits backing me, it doesn’t mean Raleigh’s going to talk about the things I need to know the moment I body-share with him.

  At last, he’s finished with his food, he pushes his chair back—the legs make a scraping sound—and he stands.

  He walks to the window, runs his fingers along the windowsill, then inspects them for dust.

  And I see outside.

  It’s New Kimearo.

  Everything seems to stop.

  He’s gone back there.

  Where it all started…where I was.

  I disconnect, feel jittery. I know what’s got to happen.

  “When is it?” Corin asks. “The Section meeting?”

  I shake my head. “I don’t know. But I know where he is, and we need to go there now.”

  “What? While we wait for a Section meeting? Won’t that increase the chances of us getting caught?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “But he’s at New Kimearo, so it’s got to be there.” My head spins. “Maybe I can get him to arrange a meeting when we’re there.” I take a deep breath. “It’s got to be there where we launch the attack, Corin. We know that town. It makes sense. Waiting for a Section meeting to form naturally is going to mean it’s in a different town—it has to. We need all the advantages we can get.”

  New Kimearo looks both the same and different. Huge stone buildings and blocks, all around us. A cool wind lifts sand and dust in the air, makes it so we see everything through a murky orange veil. Peering through it, I expect things to have changed. Big things.

  But they haven’t.

  The buildings are all in the same places. The cracks in the tarmac are the same. Underneath the orange fog, everything is just the same. But it’s so the same—like it hasn’t changed at all—that it makes it seem like it has.

  The wind presses cool fingers against me, and I step back against the nearest building, look left, then right. Corin’s next to me, looking a little queasy.

  We’re behind the education block, a street away from the open-air market. The sounds of chatter float in the air toward us. I try not to think how close we are to the conversion compound they kept me imprisoned in.

  “What are you going to do?” Corin asks. “Just reveal ourselves and ask for the Section?”

  I run a hand through my hair, and my heart thuds. What am I going to do? Because now we’re here—and we’re here so quickly—it feels real. It’s happening now.

  “Raleigh,” I whisper. “We need to find him. And my dog,” I add.

  Corin gives me a curt nod, and we set off. We move like we do on the raids, looking around, all sense on high alert. I try not to think of the last time I raided New Kimearo or the last time I was here, and—

  We see them.

  Enhanced. At the end of the road. Two figures.

  I swear and grab Corin’s hand, and, in a moment, it’s like none of this has happened—like we’re back, raiding the town, like when we still lived at Nbutai.

  My heart pounds as we rush to the right. There’s an alleyway, and Corin pushes me in front of him.

  “I thought we wanted Raleigh to know we’re here?” he whispers once we’re right at the end, next to three metal bins and some old cardboard boxes.

  I shake my head. “Not like this. It’s got to be on our terms. Not them just finding us.”

  I look back to the glimpse of the street, feel sick. How soon before they get to our alleyway, look down here? Because, they will, won’t they? They’ll see our eyes, and they’ll know, and I’ll get hauled to Raleigh, and I won’t have had time to plan the war’s end on my terms, work out exactly what I’m going to do at the Section meeting, the order of things, how saving some of the Enhanced fits into using the spirits to kill. But planning—that’s all Raleigh’s been doing. Making plans for how he’s going to use me when he’s got me again.

  And now…now he will.

  “Kiss me,” Corin says.

  I stare at him. This isn’t the time for this. We have to think. We have to get out. But the alleyway’s a dead-end: a brick wall, too high.

  But what if it is the last time?

  The last time we get to kiss, in life?

  My body locks up, and I stare at him. Oh Gods, he thinks it too. This is it.

  Corin’s gaze deepens. “Keep your eyes shut and kiss me.”

  Then his hands are on either side of my face, pulling me closer, anchoring me to him. His mouth is firm, and he kisses me deeply, a kiss that makes me respond, makes my body press into his, devouring any space between us. A kiss that fills me with the urgency of it, the desperation.

  The last kiss?

  My eyes are shut. I don’t even remember closing them.

  The kiss is amazing, it speaks, and it sings.

  It’s almost enough to make me forget we’re in the enemy’s nest.

  Corin’s right hand moves to the small of my back, a sturdy presence there, holding me, supporting me, as my torso arches into him. His left hand is still holding my face, holding me against him. Our kiss gets more frantic, and my hands are on his hips, then slipping down, feeling the strong muscles of his thighs.

  I’m going to hold onto him, even as their hands rip us apart. I won’t ever let go of him. Nothing can make me. We belong together. We—

  Corin pulls back.

  My eyes spring open.

  I’m dizzy, and I stare at him as he stares back at me, souls connected. My fingers anchor into his belt loops, and I stare at him. He blinks a few times, lets out some hard, deep breaths. The sounds of them fill me, they’re all I can hear. Not the Enhanced Ones’ gleeful shouts as they see us.

  Just Corin.

  He clears his throat, then looks up at the sky for a moment. It’s a clear blue.

  “Well, those two will’ve gone past in that time. Gods, wow.” He looks around. “I t
ake it they didn’t see us. Or if they did, they were too embarrassed to pull us apart. They wouldn’t have suspected Untamed would sneak into their town to…kiss.”

  I seem to hear his words in slow motion, and it takes me a moment to realize what’s happened. By the time I do, we’re edging back to the alleyway’s entrance, hand-in-hand.

  My body tingles. I want to kiss him again.

  But we have a war to win.

  And, right now, I need to work out what we’re going to do, where we’re going to go.

  The road is clear, left and right, and we head back out, take the minor backroads that lead us far away from the market that we can still hear.

  “We need a safe place,” I say.

  A safe place.

  I think of the stone settlement, wonder what’s happening, how the Zharat are behaving. I close my eyes for a moment as unease rises like an unruly tide inside me. I have to trust my people. They’ll have worked something out. Or Taras and Elf and all the others will have taken control by force—they outnumber the Zharat.

  “We need a room or something that’s just ours,” I say, mainly so I speak and ground myself to the here and now, so I’m not fretting about the Untamed, about something I have no control over.

  “A room that’s just ours.” Corin’s eyes light up.

  I give him a look. “We need a base here. We have to focus. We can’t just hide out, outside. It’ll get cold at night. And we can have the dog with us.”

  “The dog.” He laughs.

  “What?”

  He smiles. “Nothing. How long do you plan on hiding out for?”

  I shrug. “Enough time for us to plan how to get Raleigh to have a Section meeting, without revealing we’re here. We need time to plan how to do the most damage when we call the spirits in.”

  He nods. “What about one of the warehouses? Where we got tinned soup?”

  My mouth waters at the thought of food. I’ve only been to the warehouses once. It was a raid, about four years ago. Corin and I were in the same team, along with Alan and Sajo. A week before, Keelie had swiped the keys to a couple of the warehouses that stored tinned food. We went back one night, when the moonlight was strongest, three teams, and collected about twenty tins, each from different crates within the warehouse. Never enough to draw suspicion. But we kept going back, different teams, every couple of months or so when our other food sources were scarce.