He’d managed to get his sword back, though one of the wraths had given him a bad gash on the thigh. But none of that mattered, because they’d taken Liv. Just taken her.
Cedric ran across the grass and toward the street where three wraths were shoving Liv into the back door of a large, boxy vehicle, one he remembered Liv calling a “van.” This one was all white, with words that Cedric didn’t recognize printed along its side. Cedric’s feet slapped against the pavement, the gash in his leg burning with every step. The wraths were getting into the van now, shutting the doors. It started moving forward just as Cedric caught up to the rear end. All Cedric could do was slap one futile hand against its backside before it outpaced him. For just a brief moment, he stared after it—after Liv—and knew she was lost. There was no way for him to track that van once it disappeared around the corner, no way to know where in this very large world it was going.
Stop, Cedric thought to himself, gripping his sword handle tight. Think.
She’s not lost yet.
Cedric spotted the mopeds over near the curb and raced to them, jumping on one. He didn’t even bother to sheathe his sword, but kept it dangling from one hand as the other hand gripped the front bar. Remembering what Liv had taught him just that morning, Cedric turned the key and took off down the street.
The van was faster than the moped, and Cedric knew if he didn’t catch up to it soon, Liv really would be gone. He bent forward, keeping to one side of the road. As the white van slowed down to turn onto a cross street, Cedric knew he had his chance.
He pulled up to the large van’s bumper, then its doors. He was less than a foot away from its side, moving at nearly the same speed.
Then he was moving past it and just barely in front of it. The wrath at the wheel would have no choice but to stop, swerve quickly, or hit Cedric’s moped. Cedric wasn’t quite sure which option it would choose. But he’d find out in a few seconds, when he either cleared the vehicle or was hit by several hundred pounds of screaming metal.
Cedric kept his eyes open as his moped cut directly into the path of the wraths’ van. He gritted his teeth as he heard the sound of squealing, then smelled something acrid in the air. The van was turning quickly, its wheels dragging sideways against the pavement as its front end missed Cedric’s moped by inches.
Cedric had to swerve before he hit the shoulder of the road. He didn’t quite make it in time. One second he was on the bike’s seat, and the next he was flying through the air.
Cedric hit the ground hard, landing on his shoulder and hip and then rolling once, twice, three times through the grass. He pushed himself up off the ground to see the wrath’s vehicle skidding sideways on the road, leaving behind a light trail of smoke and black marks on the pavement.
With a grunt, Cedric got to his feet. He could feel that the entire left side of his body would be black and blue in a few hours, and the gash in his leg was still bleeding. But he could take care of those things later. He ran as quickly as he could on his injured leg toward the back of the vehicle.
It was only as he got nearer that Cedric realized he no longer had his sword on him—it must have fallen clear when he’d been thrown from the moped. He whirled quickly, looking for its silver shine, but couldn’t see it in the tall grass lining the road. There wasn’t time to search for it. He might only have a matter of moments before the wraths straightened the van and took off again.
But just as Cedric reached the back door of the vehicle, it opened. Cedric stopped in a fighting stance, ready to face whatever creature jumped out at him. Instead, it was Liv who tumbled out of the seat and onto the ground. She looked up at him blearily, her pupils nearly overtaking the green-brown of her eyes.
“Ced . . . ,” she started, blinking heavily.
He knelt down to her. “It’s okay, I’ve got you.”
“Cedric, there’s . . . there’s . . .” Her eyes closed again, almost as though she’d fallen asleep mid-sentence.
The two front doors of the van burst open, a wrath jumping out of each side.
Cedric was just barely able to move Liv behind him and face the wrath nearest to him as it punched out with one hand. Cedric blocked the punch with difficulty. His whole body felt tired. And there were three wraths in the van, and he had no—
“Weapons,” Liv whispered from the ground. She struggled to sit up as Cedric dodged another blow. The other two wraths were rounding the other side of the boxy vehicle.
“Inside.” Liv pointed toward the interior of the vehicle. Cedric looked inside the van and saw a stack of gleaming, shining metal sitting there just beneath the fabric seat. It felt like looking into a mirage, or a dream. There were swords and axes and knives. All he needed to do was reach one.
Cedric dove inside the van and shut the door behind him just as the three wraths all converged where he had been standing. He reached into the pile of weapons that were strewn across the seat and picked one up at random—a thick sword as long as his arm. It would have to do. Quickly, he opened the door on the other side of the van and jumped out again, racing around the front to meet the wraths head on.
They were already there, anger twisting up their faces.
But Cedric had a weapon now. He swung back his arm and slashed it down toward the first wrath’s neck—
Only to watch it bounce right off.
Almost as if the creature’s neck were made of rock, or as if the sword were made of . . . what was it called? Plastic?
Cedric looked down at his weapon with a sudden understanding. It wasn’t real metal, but a fake. Completely harmless. Completely useless.
Why in hell would wraths have fake weapons?
But there wasn’t time to think about that. All three of the wraths were circling Cedric now, the nearest one grinning at the plastic sword in his hand. It reached into the leather holster at its side and pulled out a very sharp, very real knife. One that could cut through Cedric’s fake weapon—and his skin—in half a second.
The wrath with the knife smiled as the others closed in on Cedric. He gripped his ridiculous weapon tight in one hand. It might be worth less than a twig, but it was all he had.
The first wrath lunged at Cedric, and he ducked low, jabbing his fake sword up into the creature’s midsection. The plastic edge bent in half, but it still slowed the wrath in his tracks. The only problem now was the other two. . . .
A buzzing noise distracted Cedric, and he looked up quickly to see a dark shape come sailing toward him. It was Liv, hunched down over the handlebars of Cedric’s moped. She was coming straight for their group.
The wraths spun to face Liv as she got closer. One jumped out of the way to avoid being mowed down, but another charged right for her. She was close enough that Cedric could see her grit her teeth and scrunch her shoulders before turning the moped slightly and running it over the wrath’s blocky foot.
The moped squealed and stopped, and Liv wobbled a bit on top of it.
“Cedric,” she gasped. “Get on!”
He didn’t have to be told twice. He got to her in two large leaps, just barely missing the grasp of the wrath with the knife, who reached out to catch him. Instead, the wrath got hold of the sleeve of his shirt, tearing it completely as Cedric wrenched himself away and threw himself on the moped behind Liv. She turned the bike and sped off just as Cedric felt a knife whiz past his ear.
The moped sputtered as it moved, carrying them down the street at a speed barely faster than running.
“They will catch up to us,” Cedric said, his mouth up against Liv’s ear as he tried to lean forward, as if pushing ahead with his own weight could make the bike speed up.
“Something’s wrong with it,” Liv said.
She was right; the moped was making a loud, clunking noise as they moved at half speed over the pavement. But the bike wasn’t the only problem. Liv was less steering the moped than hanging on for dear life, her shoulders slumping down lower and lower. The bike wobbled as her head dropped down onto one shoulder. Cedric h
ad to press himself up against her back and put his hands over hers on the handles, straightening the bike and keeping it moving forward.
Over the clangs of the bike, Cedric could still hear the wraths in pursuit behind them. He looked over his shoulder to see one wrath chasing him, while the other two were piling back in the vehicle. The moped was just barely outpacing the wrath on foot, and Cedric whirled back around, leaning forward to will the bike to go faster. He took a corner onto a side street, and when he looked around again, the wrath behind him was circling back to join the others. The vehicle would be able to catch up to them in a matter of moments.
Liv’s head drooped and snapped up, the weight of her body leaning dangerously to the right. The cage of Cedric’s arms was the only thing keeping her upright on the moped. They wouldn’t make it much farther.
That’s when Cedric saw it—a small row of bushes lining the front of someone’s yard, protected by a set of black and blue bins. He quickly maneuvered the bike off the road and behind the bins, lifting Liv off the seat and dropping them both to the ground beside the bushes.
Cedric moved as close to Liv as he possibly could, hunching his shoulders down low over her body and hoping against hope the bins were sufficiently blocking the moped from the road. It was only a few seconds before he heard the van speed around the corner with a squeal. He held his breath as it got nearer and nearer, trying to see through the thick green and brown of the hedges. The van was right in front of them, then passing by, then moving quickly down the street.
Cedric let out a long, jagged breath. But he knew they weren’t totally safe. The wraths would figure out that the moped couldn’t have gotten away from them so easily, and they would probably double back. Still, he couldn’t find it in himself to get up. One entire side of his body was throbbing, the cut on his thigh still bleeding. Inches away from him, Liv’s eyes fluttered. She turned just a bit, rotating her body so she was facing Cedric.
“There you are,” she whispered.
“Here I am,” Cedric replied, reaching out one hand and gently resting it against the side of her head. “You’re hurt.”
Liv nodded. “My head hit a wall.”
Her eyes found his, and she seemed to struggle to focus them. Her pupils were still unnaturally large, but at least now Cedric could make out the color around them. “You saved me,” she said. “Again.”
Cedric smiled. “And you saved me. Again.”
“Anytime,” she said, slightly slurring the word. Then the smile slipped from her face, and her eyebrows pulled together. “The wraths said something . . . they were going to take me to the castle? Or a castle? It was hard to hear because my ears were all fuzzy.” Liv gave a sloppy, too-loud laugh. If Cedric didn’t know any better, he might have thought she’d spent the whole morning drinking mead.
“Fuzzy ears,” she repeated, giggling.
“Shh, we can talk about this later—”
“But they were going to take me back. To your world. They said ‘castle.’ What would Malquin be doing back there?”
Cedric shook his head. Every time he thought about Malquin, rage buzzed through him, making it hard to think of anything else. Could Malquin really be back in Caelum? He had no more army there, no more power . . . He stopped himself from wondering. Thinking of Malquin clouded his mind, and he had too much to focus on right now—trying to listen for the wraths’ van turning around, and trying to keep Liv quiet in case they did.
But delirious Liv had other ideas.
“Cedric,” she continued, her eyes going wide as she looked up at him, “Your face is so close right now.”
“That’s because we are hiding for our lives.”
Liv sighed. “We’re always doing that. But now that you’re right here . . . I mean right here . . .” She put one hand up to the side of his face. Cedric froze, looking down at her suddenly still expression. “I maybe shouldn’t say this right now, ’cause I’m a little woozy and also I think there might be two of you, but . . . I can’t keep not saying the things I want to say ’cause I’m scared of what you’ll say back, you know?”
He did know. Even though her words were slipping into nonsense, every part of him wanted to hear what she had to say. His heart beat rapidly, and he was torn between his need to keep watch and his desire to focus on nothing but her.
“You don’t have to say anything right now,” Cedric forced himself to say.
“I do,” Liv responded. She blinked hard. “We’ve been avoiding talking about it, about the portals . . . and what happens when we close them forever.”
“Liv—”
“I don’t want to never see you again,” she said, putting some force behind her words so they’d come out clearly. “That sucked so much, saying good-bye to you in Caelum. When I came back here, I thought I saw you everywhere.”
Liv’s hand was still against Cedric’s face, and her thumb made a small circle over his cheekbone.
“Did you see me everywhere?”
Cedric put his hand over hers, his fingers touching against her finger near his temple. “I saw you here,” he said, tapping the side of his head. “Every minute.”
Liv smiled. “And now you’re here. You came back. And I don’t want you to tell me you have to go again.” Her words were slurring more now, despite her obvious effort. Her eyes began to droop. “I know it’s selfish, and I shouldn’t say it . . . but I’d rather hide behind these garbage cans with you forever than have to say good-bye again.”
Her eyes sank lower as her voice faded off.
“Liv?”
Her eyes popped open again. “Do you hear that?”
Cedric lifted his head slightly, and he did hear it—the sound of a vehicle getting closer. Were the wraths doubling back?
“We have to go,” he said. “Can you stand?”
“Maybe. But what happens after that?” she asked, her voice fading away again.
Cedric’s mind raced. There was no way he’d get Liv all the way back to Malibu on a moped, not with her like this. He suddenly remembered the car in the driveway back at the house where they’d met Henry Martin. Maybe the keys were somewhere inside. . . .
The sound of a car motor was getting nearer. It was going slowly—probably looking for them.
“We’ll have to slip behind the houses. Come on.”
With some difficulty, Cedric hauled Liv to her feet and walked her quickly behind the nearest house, leaving their hiding spot and everything they’d said there behind.
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE
Henry Martin was dead.
He was lying on the living room floor of the OC house, his body half on the rug, one foot extended into the fireplace. A pool of blood was congealing under his head.
Liv stared down at him, a wave of nausea overtaking her. If she didn’t sit down soon, she was definitely going to throw up. But she couldn’t move. For two whole months, her mission had been clear: find the Knight called Martin, then save the city. Maybe the world. And after all that searching, she’d finally found him. He’d been on the verge of giving them the answers they needed, and now . . .
He wouldn’t be giving them anything now.
Liv had hit a wall—in more ways than one—and she didn’t know what to do next. Her whole body was still as she stared at the unmoving form of Henry Martin. Or what was Henry Martin. Another dead Knight. So many dead Knights.
“What do we do now?” she whispered, then swallowed against the bile rising in her throat. She sensed that Cedric was moving behind her, but she couldn’t remember what he was doing. Looking for something? She should help him, but she couldn’t move, couldn’t tear her eyes away from their last chance to fix things, lying dead at her feet.
“Liv.” She heard Cedric behind her, urgent, low. “We have to find those car keys. The wraths will be back at any second. Where are keys generally stored?”
Liv’s mind spun. It felt like her thoughts were whirring around her, and she was unable to catch and hold on to a single one. Her tong
ue felt thick. She really needed to sit down.
“Liv?” That urgent voice again. More footsteps. Out of the corner of her eye, Liv saw Cedric pick up a vaseful of fake flowers and empty it, then look inside.
“The keys, Liv. We need those keys.”
Liv swayed on her feet. She was going down. She lowered herself, as gently as she could, to her knees. She was careful to keep away from the pool of blood. Her eyes stayed transfixed on Henry Martin, on their last hope.
“Please,” Cedric said, kneeling down low across from her, on the other side of the body. “I know you’re upset, but we have to leave.”
Liv knew she had to focus, had to concentrate. . . . Her hand went to the edge of Henry Martin’s pants pocket, and she realized she wasn’t breathing. If she exhaled now, she would definitely throw up. Carefully, keeping her line of sight just a few inches above the spot where Henry Martin lay, she reached her hand into his pocket. Her fingers closed firmly over a thin piece of metal, and she forced herself to pull them out again.
She splayed her palm, holding the keys up to Cedric. He looked down at them for a moment, eyes wide now with amazement.
“Let’s go,” he said, gently. “Can you stand?”
She could.
It was barely nighttime, but the Malibu house was already dark. Or maybe it just felt dark. Liv’s nausea had been gone for a few hours, but she couldn’t shake the feeling of low-level dread that had crept in just under her skin.
She’d managed to stay awake enough to guide Cedric back to Malibu, even stopping at a pay phone to call the police in Orange County and give them an anonymous tip about Henry Martin.
As soon as they got back to the house, Joe and the others had immediately taken out the first-aid kit and seen to Cedric’s and Liv’s wounds. Fortunately, the gash on Cedric’s leg wouldn’t need stitches, and Liv had only suffered a bump on the head. After some aspirin and water and a few hours’ rest she was feeling physically better, though Joe told her she’d have to stay awake for the next twenty-four hours just in case she had a concussion.
The Broken World Page 23
