Defying Fate (The Descent Series)

by SM Reine

  Malcolm sat up. “What did you just say?”

  She thumbed the earpiece, turning off the speaker. “One of our helicopters got taken by Zane St. Vil—a kopis that was at HQ for medical care. But if St. Vil took the helicopter, and it’s at the airstrip now…”

  The pilot’s compartment opened. When Malcolm saw who stepped through, he started laughing, and he couldn’t seem to stop.

  James Faulkner was looking thoroughly old these days. He used to have the kind of perfect hair that a gentleman spy would have envied, but now it was going gray. He looked like he hadn’t shaved in days. He was also wearing a Union uniform.

  The plane began to inch forward. Krista stood and aimed at him.

  “Don’t shoot,” Malcolm said.

  Wonder of wonders, she listened to him.

  “James Faulkner,” Krista said, bracing the gun at her hip. “You’re under arrest.”

  “No, actually, I’m leaving, and I’m taking Malcolm with me. You can get out of the plane right now, or I can knock you out for the duration of the trip. It’s your choice.”

  “You destroyed half of Fallon getting arrested,” she said. “I saw the notice.”

  “That’s right.”

  That information seemed to be more than enough for Krista. She lowered her gun. “I’ll get off here.”

  James opened the sliding door and ducked behind the wall. The airstrip was moving more quickly underneath them now as they accelerated.

  There was no way to hear the shouting of the Union guards as the plane began to pick up speed. The engine was too loud. But Malcolm felt a pretty powerful surge of satisfaction at seeing them sprint after the plane with their hands waving over their heads. Especially when he saw the shock on Zettel’s ugly face.

  How funny. Malcolm’s sense of humor seemed to have returned.

  Bullets pinged into the side of the airplane.

  “Make it quick,” James told Krista. “We’re taking off.”

  She tossed the gun out the door first. “You owe me,” she told Malcolm, and then she leaped out the door, arm over her head and knees tucked to her chest.

  James slammed the door shut again. The plane accelerated.

  “Of all the people I thought might spring me, you weren’t one of them,” Malcolm said, helping James latch the door.

  “Don’t thank me yet.” James peered out one of the windows. There were three SUVs on their tail, including one of the fancy ones with the hood-mounted machine gun. “I only freed you for a favor.”

  “Naturally.”

  The engines roared. The flaps on the wings adjusted, and the pavement dropped out from beneath them.

  The plane bounced and shuddered, but it climbed. It climbed fast. Malcolm’s stomach lurched.

  James threw open the cockpit door and stepped inside. The pilot was a Union man with a shaved head and the look of someone who wasn’t happy to be there. He was also wearing a bathrobe—an actual bathrobe.

  But as they plunged into the gloomy gray clouds, leaving the Union behind them, Malcolm decided that he didn’t care if the pilot was a drunken horse with Alzheimer’s.

  He was free.

  The private jet flew into the silent night. Malcolm wanted to properly enjoy his liberation, but the mini-fridge in back wasn’t stocked with alcohol. He settled for distracting himself by annoying the pilot.

  “Zane St. Vil, right?” Malcolm asked, flopping into the copilot’s chair.

  St. Vil shot him a look. “The fuck are you?”

  “Ah, the dulcet tones of a blossoming Union recruit. Makes my heart give a little pitter-pat.” Malcolm jammed the copilot’s headset over his ears. It was silent.

  “They cut us off twenty minutes after we got off the ground,” James said from the cockpit doorway. “But not before I heard someone from Union control mentioning fighter jets.”

  That meant that things were going to get ugly in short order. Malcolm didn’t want to be in a tin can piloted by a bald guy when that happened.

  “Excellent,” Malcolm said. “Best rescue mission ever.”

  “Who are you?” St. Vil asked.

  “I’m hurt that you don’t recognize your traitorous former commander. Just hurt. Especially since I remember you—you were assigned to the Fernley base under my command. I think I’m the one who put you on Fallon patrol.”

  “What’d you do to be a ‘former’ commander?” he asked.

  “Pissed off Zettel.”

  St. Vil didn’t look like he believed him, but that was all right. If the Union had fighter jets coming in, they’d all be dead soon enough anyway.

  “Where am I going?” St. Vil asked James, shooting him a loathing glance.

  “Forward, for the moment. Maintain the trajectory toward Colorado.” James gestured to Malcolm. “We need to talk.”

  They propped the cockpit door open, presumably to keep an eye on St. Vil, and moved to the plush leather seats in back. The sky passing outside the windows was navy blue. Malcolm imagined that he heard the fighter jets approaching, even though he couldn’t see anything.

  “What can I do for you, Jim?” Malcolm asked.

  A muscle in James’s cheek twitched. He hated nicknames.

  “Before you were arrested, you told me that you would send Hannah and Nathaniel to the Haven. I still want to send them there. You must know where it is.”

  “Well, I hate to disappoint, but we can’t exactly walk into the Haven now that the Union doesn’t like me.”

  “Don’t worry about that part. Where is it?”

  Malcolm glanced around the plane. “Map?”

  James ducked into the cockpit and returned with a map of the surrounding states. Malcolm spread it out over the table.

  He hadn’t been to the Haven’s entrance, but he had seen the briefings on it, and had looked up the coordinates once. It was tricky to correspond a bunch of digits to a gas station map, though.

  Malcolm found the closest town and dragged his finger along the highway. “It’s around here somewhere,” he said, pointing at an empty stretch of forest. “I’m not sure exactly where.”

  “That will have to be good enough.” James circled the area, then tapped the nib of his pen on the nearest highway. “Do you think there would be a long enough stretch here for us to land the plane?”

  “Sure,” Malcolm said.

  “You have no idea, do you?”

  “In all the long years of our warm, adoring brotherhood, have you ever seen me fly a plane? The highway looks good to me. That’s the best I’ve got for you.” Malcolm glanced around. “Does that mean you have your ex and kid hidden around here somewhere?”

  “We’ll have to pick them up on the way.” James rubbed a hand over his stubble as he stared at the map. His eyes were rimmed with dark circles, like bruises. “I hope there’s enough fuel.”

  Malcolm couldn’t remember James ever looking as terrible as he did now, even when their little party had been trudging through knee-deep grime in the demonic undercities.

  He could only think of one thing that could make James look that miserable.

  “There’s an Elise problem, isn’t there?” Malcolm asked.

  James pinched the bridge of his nose. “You could say that.”

  “Did you finally fuck?”

  Pain exploded in the side of his head. Malcolm hit the floor of the plane.

  There wasn’t much room to fall. He smacked his elbow on the seat on the way down, and his whole left arm went numb.

  He didn’t bother trying to get up once he landed. He grinned up at James from the floor, watching as the witch shook out his fist. There was blood on his knuckles. Good hit.

  It actually felt kind of spectacular to get punched like that—refreshing, in a way, after dealing with weeks of sobriety in a Union holding cell. His head was much too clear without alcohol in his system.

  “I take that as a yes,” Malcolm said.

  James folded the map, calm as you please. “I’m going to talk to St. Vil.” />
  “I think it’s great, you know. You two swell kids deserve each other.” Malcolm rubbed his temple. It was tender from connecting with James’s fist—almost as tender as the dozens of times that Elise had punched him in much the same way. “Really.”

  “We’re not going to discuss that,” James said. He headed for the cockpit, and Malcolm followed.

  “Don’t you want to compare notes? Talk about those funny hamster noises Elise makes when she comes? Ooh, unless you didn’t…ooh. Well, nothing to be ashamed of. You’re an older gentleman now. It happens to all of us once in a while, and it’s not easy to keep up with Elise. She’s a wildcat. Or a hamster. Pick an animal! Whatever offends you more.”

  James stopped walking. Turned around. Malcolm braced himself for another punch that never came.

  “You’re deliberately provoking me,” James said.

  “Me? Never.”

  “Are you hoping to die? Is that what’s going through your thick skull?”

  “Actually, it’s mostly just ringing in my skull right now,” Malcolm said. “And a distinct desire to be unconscious, yes. Might as well get some sleep while I wait for the Union to shoot us out of the air. So where is the old girl, anyway?”

  “She’s busy,” James said. “She’ll be back soon.”

  “Dead again? How inconvenient.” Malcolm gave a sly smile. “Or does this have to do with the Gray thing?”

  James’s eyes clouded with sudden fury. He loomed over Malcolm, shoulders squared. “What do you know about that?”

  Before Malcolm could come up with an adequately obnoxious response, he caught a glimpse of St. Vil in the cockpit. He was hunched over, hand on the microphone, and muttering into the headset.

  So the Union hadn’t cut them off after all.

  James realized that Malcolm wasn’t looking at him. He turned around.

  “Lovely,” Malcolm said.

  Swearing under his breath, James strode into the cockpit and ripped the headset off of St. Vil’s head. “What are you doing?”

  St. Vil punched a button on the console and stood. For a guy in a bathrobe, he managed to pull off intimidating pretty well. The crazy eyes, bloody face, and shiny bald head helped.

  “You’re both dead, that’s what I’m doing.”

  Malcolm laughed. It was the sound of insanity escaping his lips. “Oh, you called the Union. You called the Union! Just brilliant. Do you think that they’re going to let you get off before they kill Jim and me?”

  “They wouldn’t shoot me down,” St. Vil said.

  James looked like he couldn’t decide if he’d rather choke St. Vil or Malcolm. His face twisted with anger, the muscles on his neck stood rigid, and he opened his mouth as if to yell—but his face went slack when he looked out the window.

  “What’s that?” James asked, slipping into the copilot’s seat. He stared out the front window.

  There were lights approaching in the dark clouds. It was hard to get any sense of perspective up in the air—everything seemed so much smaller than it was on the ground. But the lights seemed to be moving in fast.

  “I think they found us,” Malcolm said. “Thanks, Zane.”

  St. Vil swung a fist. Malcolm ducked under it, driving a shoulder into his gut. The pilot fell into his chair.

  Lights flashed in the clouds—a lot like the flare of a gun’s muzzle.

  The plane gave a hard jerk.

  Malcolm fell against the wall. St. Vil dived for him again. The plane pitched at the same time, making the clouds swirl dizzyingly outside the window, and St. Vil stumbled against the console instead.

  A fighter plane roared over them, swooping low enough that it looked like they might collide. James launched himself out of the copilot’s chair just in time.

  Gunfire rained through the cabin. A bullet punched through the window, and St. Vil took a shot in the face.

  His skull bounced against the wall. Crimson splattered behind him.

  James shoved Malcolm out of the cockpit. Another rain of bullets pounded into the chair that he had vacated.

  The entire windshield shattered. Wind rushed through the plane like the angry fist of God, and Malcolm gripped the wall to keep from getting sucked out.

  They dipped under the clouds quickly—much too quickly. Adrenaline raced through Malcolm and a grin spread over his face.

  Some thrills were even better than getting drunk.

  The nose of the plane pitched forward. Malcolm had to brace his hands against the seats to climb back to the door, and the tilt only got worse with every step. They were falling fast.

  More gunfire. The plane shook harder.

  Malcolm grabbed a sack off of the wall. There should have been enough for each person that the plane had the capacity to carry, but he was only able to locate one. Well, the Union had been undergoing budget cuts lately.

  “Two guys, one parachute,” Malcolm shouted over the whipping wind. “Thumb war?”

  James ripped the parachute out of his hands. “We’ll share.” He sounded remarkably calm, considering that the nearest window was now filled with a view of the trees hundreds of feet below. Malcolm hadn’t even noticed that the plane was rolling.

  The witch donned the parachute, strapped the buckles, and grabbed the door.

  “Hugs?” Malcolm asked, opening his arms.

  James looked like he was briefly tempted to leave Malcolm behind, but then wrapped his arms around his midsection.

  The plane pitched again as bullets ripped through the side, opening a jagged gash that looked like teeth. Malcolm’s feet slipped out from underneath him. His weight slammed into James, and the wind sucked them out the door.

  Then they were in open air.

  The plane rushed above them, and Malcolm had a perfect view of it as another barrage of bullets severed it in half.

  The wind sucked all the moisture from his eyeballs and left him squinting into blurry darkness. There was no room for worries while plummeting toward the forest. There was nothing but the wind, the air, and the beating of his heart.

  He dug his fingers into James’s back and thought, This wouldn’t be the worst way to die.

  The parachute unfurled, catching the wind. The ropes snapped tight. Their downward momentum was instantly halted, and the powerful jerk almost tossed Malcolm free.

  “Hang on,” James grunted, eyelids squeezed shut against the wind.

  The black line of trees was still coming at them too quickly. They had jumped close to the ground, and the parachute didn’t have enough time to slow their descent.

  Malcolm had two seconds to think about how pretty the forest looked before they hit.

  The trees tore into him. His arms lost their grip around James, and they separated.

  A branch drove into Malcolm’s midsection like a baseball bat to the ribs. Pine needles jabbed at his face, scraped his clothes, drove into his skin.

  He hit another branch, and another. Then his back struck the ground.

  Malcolm lay flat on the forest floor, stunned and dizzy. The flaming remains of their plane disappeared over the line of the trees. There was a distant thudding. A flare of fire.

  The jets buzzed past without stopping.

  Every time he tried to draw in breath, it felt like being stabbed in the ribs with a pencil. He panted, forcing oxygen into his lungs, and breathing became easier second by second.

  He finally managed to draw in a lungful of air that didn’t feel like dying, and it was better than women, better than akvavit, better than orgasms.

  Almost.

  A body crashed through the branches nearby. James was tangled in his parachute cables. It took a few minutes of ungainly struggling to unhook his harness.

  Once he freed himself, he joined Malcolm at the bottom of the hill.

  “Are you alive?” James asked, bracing his hands on his knees.

  “No,” Malcolm groaned.

  “Great.”

  James flopped onto the ground beside him, and neither of them moved f
or quite some time.

  Getting hit by a forest was even better for a drunk-like buzz than getting punched by James. Several blissful minutes passed before Malcolm could order his thoughts again.

  Though his body was one big bruise, his mind had gone into blessed shock. Instead of thinking about how much the Union wanted to kill them, all he thought about was the moment of blissful zero gravity that he had enjoyed as they fell.

  James seemed to lack the same appreciation for the profound stillness that followed a near-death situation. He was the first to sit up, muddy and covered in pine needles. “Did you see where the plane crashed? Where’s the Union going to be searching for us?”

  Malcolm pushed himself into a sitting position. His head was starting to clear again. Too bad. “I think they must be up that way,” he said, waving vaguely in the direction of the mountains.

  “All right. If we don’t know where the plane is, then where are we?”

  “Trees,” Malcolm said helpfully.

  James didn’t acknowledge that he had spoken. “Let’s find out.” He pulled up the hem of his shirt, baring a patch of skin near his navel that was marked with brown ink. He pressed a finger to it.

  “What’s that? You didn’t used to be inked.”

  “It’s not a tattoo—it’s a spell. A beacon, to be precise.” James let his shirt drop again. “We shouldn’t be far from Boulder, so I sent a flare that my son should be able to see. Hopefully, Nathaniel will find us before a Union witch does.”

  “Hopefully,” Malcolm said with a snort. “So you’re covered in spells. Where’s the spell that makes me feel like I didn’t get trampled by stampeding demons?”

  “I can’t heal you. This magic is different from what I normally do, and I couldn’t figure out how to make a healing spell in this style that wouldn’t kill me.”

  “How practical.”

  James grunted in response.

  The witch had managed to rescue the map from the airplane. He spread it out in the dirt and clicked his pen. “This is a locater spell,” he explained as he began drawing. “I’ll make a few anchor points, then animate the map so that we can find the Haven.”