I reached the bottom of the stairs, and my thoughts were wiped from my mind when I got out into the streets. They felt empty, though there were plenty of bodies lying around. There were greyskins too, but they were farther away and had not taken notice of me. I decided to walk to the west side of the burning building. When I got there, I saw Ethan’s body on the ground. I couldn’t think of what had come over me.
Yes I could. Revenge. That had come over me. I blamed Waverly for Ashley’s death. I blamed a lot of people. But she set it in motion. I wanted to take away someone she cared about.
Shadowface had her now. That meant she left knowing that the one she cared about was dead because of me. I doubt she felt the same as I. I was closer to Ashley than she was to this pitiful boy, I’m sure.
I had told her to aim for his heart. There was no way he was still alive. Yet, when I walked up next to him, I could see his chest moving up and down. He was still breathing! A bullet couldn’t have passed through his heart and he still be alive. It would have killed him almost instantly. I stood above him, and his eyes opened. He stared at me. There seemed to be confusion and anger all mixed together. When I knelt next to him, I could see that the bullet had missed his heart by several inches. Either Waverly had found a way to circumvent my order, or her aim had been poor. I finally came to the conclusion that I might have been able to command her to shoot him in the heart, but that didn’t mean she had the ability to do it from that distance. If I had told her to fly, all she could have done was try and get herself killed in the process.
“You’re lucky,” I said to Ethan.
He didn’t respond. Instead, he closed his eyes. I thought about leaving him. I even thought about dropping a rock on his head and finishing what Waverly had started, but a different thought hit me.
“I could use you,” I said. I wasn’t sure how yet, but I knew I would figure out a way. I knew it would have to do with my father, or even Waverly if she ever got away from Shadowface.
“Where is she?” Ethan said, just above a whisper. “Waverly. Is she alive?”
“No,” I said. “Shadowface killed her.” It was a lie meant to make him angry at my mother, but it only turned him against me.
“No,” he said, “you killed her. If you hadn’t done what you did, she would still be alive.”
“And if Waverly hadn’t done what she did, Ashley would still be alive.”
He closed his eyes again. I knew if I didn’t get him out of there soon, he would either bleed to death or some greyskin would find him for lunch. I finally loaded him into an abandoned truck, careful not to draw any attention. I didn’t know if Shadowface’s soldiers were still around, though evidence suggested that they were already out of Elkhorn. I knew there were others still there. My father was still alive and he would continue his quest against my mother. But I wasn’t going to help him.
No. A new plan was forming in my mind.
About a hundred miles away there was a cabin that my father and I used to store weapons. We once discovered that it was raided and everything had been taken, so we never went back there again. It was an abandoned dump of a place that no one would ever bother again—the type of place a person would barely seek shelter in if there was a storm. It was perfect.
For the next couple of weeks, I took care of Ethan, commanding him not to speak for the longest time. I knew he was angry with me. He always would be. But I didn’t care about making him like me. That was not what this was about. I needed to train myself. I needed to make my power stronger. So, I used Ethan. Once he started healing, I had him do menial tasks like cleaning the cabin, or even making me dinner. It was practice for my mind, but I wasn’t opposed to getting other uses out of him too.
The first time I figured out that I could control greyskins was when a group of them had noticed a light coming from the cabin. Naturally I had brought a gun with me, expecting to have to fight them off, but when I closed my eyes, I saw my way into their brains. It was different than doing it to a person.
I set the gun down on the porch and walked within inches of the greyskin, telling it with my mind not to move. It’s black eyes stared back at me, its rotten teeth oozing with slime. I wondered how many victims its teeth had sunken into. I wondered how many innocent people’s lives had been snatched away by its claws.
Of course, who was innocent these days? No one.
This was the first time my power gave me full control. I liked it, but the thought almost scared me. What if this Starborn blood would have made it into my mother’s hands? What if my father had taken it before me? No doubt his plan included obtaining it from Waverly. I’m sure he was going about it in a diplomatic way, as was his custom. He had always been that way. Knowing him, he was trying to become friends with Waverly. He would want her to come to him with the blood, not the other way around. His belief is that if a person asks him to be in control, then he or she has no right to take it back from him later.
Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn’t. In this case, it didn’t. He had taken too long, and Shadowface had attacked. And I got the blood. And with it, Ethan became my unwilling sidekick.
I took him with me on fact-finding missions. I was looking for Shadowface, but I had to be discrete. Finally, I found out that some of her guards were in one of the towns just miles from my cabin.
“Watch for guards and greyskins,” I told Ethan. “If you see any, I want you to warn me by tapping on my shoulder. Otherwise, you cannot make a sound.”
This gave me a silent companion as we creeped to the edge of the town. One of the guards had been walking the perimeter when he found me. Without a word I had him drop his weapon to the ground.
“When are you supposed to check in?” I asked the nervous guard.
“Every fifteen minutes,” he said.
“Make sure you don’t miss one,” I said. “When it comes time, you will check in as you normally would, declaring that everything is normal.”
The guard nodded.
It was dark, and we sat far enough away from the town that no one would see us unless they had a good reason to look. I drilled the guard with questions until it came time for him to check in.
“Eight-four-two, checking in,” he said, pressing the button on his radio. “Everything is normal.”
“Copy that, eight-four-two,” said the voice from the other end.
I asked him about the location of Shadowface’s main residence, and where the best secret entrances would be. He told me as much as he knew before I realized that I needed to talk to someone higher up than this guard.
“Is there any guard here that works with Shadowface directly?” I asked.
The guard shook his head and wiped away the cold sweat from his forehead. “No guard has direct contact with Shadowface,” he said. “There is a guard here that is in charge of monitoring the main corridor where Shadowface’s office is located, but that’s about it.”
It would have to do. My mother wasn’t going to show her face to any common guard. That was why she had Samuel in the first place. He was the only one allowed to see her face. He was the only one she could trust to keep quiet about her identity.
“What’s the guard’s name?” I asked.
“Taylor,” the man said.
“Why is he here?”
“We sometimes rotate duty,” he said. “Taylor and the rest of our unit are scheduled to go back to our posts in Anchorage within the week. We will be there for the remainder of the month.”
I nodded. This was perfect. All I had to do was get Taylor to meet me. I would then find out all I needed to know about my mother’s compound. There were only a couple of more weeks of planning, and then it would all be finished.
I looked at Ethan who sat behind me, using the moonlight to search in every direction for guards or greyskins. “Can you get Taylor to meet you out here?” I asked, turning back to the guard.
“It would be a strange request,” he said, “but yes, I can get him out here.”
It t
ook a few moments of persuasion when the guard called for Taylor. He was sure to tell him that he didn’t need any backup, but just needed his opinion on something. Finally, Taylor agreed, but I was cautious. There was little doubt in my mind that Taylor was going to bring backup. But he was either too stupid to do so, or he really trusted this guard. In either case, Taylor came alone and I had what I needed. I asked him a few questions to make sure he would be useful to me, and I learned that he came with a fountain of knowledge.
Lastly, I commanded him to pull out his knife, and cut the other guard’s throat. The guard started to resist, but I didn’t let him. Ethan and I turned away and started walking for the truck, knowing Taylor would be following closely behind.
The plan was in motion, and Shadowface was going to die.
Chapter 15 - Waverly
I’m not sure what to do. Jeremiah is getting ready to leave Elkhorn and set out for Anchorage, but I don’t want to go anymore. Part of me feels like I need to stop him. But who needs to be stopped more? Olivia or Jeremiah?
“Both of them,” Gabe says when we are sitting at the lunch table.
I don’t know how many times I stand from my chair to peek through the crack in the door, making sure no one is coming into the room or listening from the other side.
“I would be able to hear it, Waverly,” Remi assures me for the third time. “Take it easy.”
I nod at her and take my seat back at the head of the table. It feels weird meeting with just the three of us. Knowing that Ethan is alive and that he isn’t in here with us feels out of place. He has been busy, pledging himself to helping Jeremiah get in to Anchorage and destroy Shadowface. Jeremiah has called a meeting for everyone to attend, so that we can all be on the same page. Assuming that we are going to help him, that is.
“I feel like I should tell Ethan,” I say.
“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea,” Remi answers. “You said he’s been acting strange? And for the past couple of days, we’ve seen how adamant he is about helping Jeremiah kill Olivia.”
Gabe nods his agreement. “Best just to keep it among us.”
“What about Stephen?” I ask.
Remi shakes her head. “I don’t trust him anymore. I would have about a month ago, but he’s lost it. He’s got no drive. If he even helps Jeremiah, it would be a surprise to me. There’s no point in telling him.”
“So, it’s just the three of us,” I say, staring down at the table. Even though my sister and Gabe are right here with me, I’ve never felt so alone.
“We don’t have to take part in any of this,” Remi says. “We can leave. Jeremiah has no rule over us.”
Gabe leans forward, his arms on the table. His voice is low as he talks in a whisper. “How certain are we that Jeremiah created the greyskin virus?”
“Almost completely,” I say. “Remi and I just realized it a few hours ago. It all fits into place.”
“But it’s not a hundred percent?”
“Someone is coming,” Remi says as she straightens in her seat.
A few seconds later, the door opens and my heart sinks when I see Ethan walk into the room. He pauses for a moment, surprised to see us. He looks from Remi to Gabe, and lastly his eyes fall on me where they stay for a long moment. He looks like he wants to say something, but he closes his mouth quickly. He looks back at Remi. “Am I interrupting something?”
“Sort of,” Remi says.
“No, you’re not,” I say, glaring at her.
“Waverly,” Ethan says, “I was hoping I could speak with you alone.”
Remi clears her throat and stands from the table. “I need to check on Evie, anyway.”
“I’ll go with you,” Gabe says.
The two of them leave the room quickly, but I remain in my seat, my eyes darting from one side of the room to the other. I can feel my heart pounding. I’ve wanted to sit down and talk with Ethan for days, but he hasn’t given me a thought, it seems. When he sits next to me at the table, my eyes begin to sting with fresh tears, though they don’t fall.
“What’s wrong?” he asks.
“What do you mean what’s wrong?” I ask angrily. “I found out that you were alive and for a moment became the happiest person in the world. But when you didn’t want to see me it felt like you died all over again.”
“I’m sorry,” he says. “It’s not easy.”
“Do you think it’s easy for me?” I ask. “Did you think it was easy when Mitch made me pull the trigger?”
Ethan shook his head. “Mitch is not the enemy.”
“He’s one of them,” I say.
“No,” Ethan says. “Shadowface is the enemy. Always has been. We shouldn’t lose focus of that.”
“I haven’t,” I say. “But I’m starting to think it’s not worth it. I can’t understand why I keep sticking around, waiting for something to happen. Why haven’t we left yet? Why haven’t we gone away?”
“Because we have key roles in taking Shadowface down,” he answers. “And if we don’t, then we will see Shadowface again when her power extends beyond here and into new territories.”
“Then we keep moving,” I say.
He purses his lips and shakes his head at me. “We have a job to do. We’ve had one from the beginning. The moment Scarecrow and his raiders crossed paths with us, we were part of this.”
“Jeremiah seems to have it under control,” I say. Part of me wants to tell him what I think about Jeremiah—that we’ve pieced the puzzle together and that he is more than likely the creator of the greyskin virus. But I don’t tell him. For some reason, I don’t trust Ethan anymore. I don’t know what it is, but he doesn’t sound like the same guy that talked to me at the campfire, comforting me during my loss of Lucas. He doesn’t sound like the same guy who told me about his family’s death. It’s something in the way he looks at me like he wants to tell me something else, but some invisible force won’t allow it.
I decide to test the waters. “What if Jeremiah isn’t any better than Shadowface?”
“I never claimed that he was,” Ethan says. “But Jeremiah isn’t looking for power. He just wants to take her out.”
“What if he is looking for power?” I ask.
“What do you mean?”
“What if he wants to attack Olivia before she makes her big reveal so he can be the one to reveal who Shadowface is?”
“What are you saying?”
“He has openly admitted that he wants to take Olivia’s place,” I tell him. “No one else will know any different if he goes to the meeting of settlement leaders and declares that he is Shadowface. He claims that he wants to use the position for good, but you and I both know that won’t be the case.”
Ethan looks down at the table as if to think about what I’ve said. “If that’s the case, then wouldn’t Jeremiah be a better alternative?”
This is where I could tell him my thoughts on who Jeremiah really is, but I decide to hold my tongue. I have missed Ethan. When I thought he was dead, I felt heartbroken. But a month is a long time in this world. I can’t truly know where his allegiance lies until he can prove it to me. It will take some time for me to be able to trust him again. Maybe if he hadn’t been so cold to me when I first saw him a couple of days ago… It was enough to make me think that something was wrong, and that he had changed somehow. I’ve got to figure out how he truly feels before I let him in with us—before I tell him our plans.
Our plans… We have no plans. Gabe, Remi, and I have no more idea what we are going to do than we did before we came to Elkhorn.
“I don’t think he would be a better alternative,” I say. “Mostly because we don’t know him. He seems nice, but that’s not enough for me.”
I think about how ready Jeremiah was to simply dispose of Jenna and Mike when they drove up to Elkhorn just because he didn’t know them. What kind of man was so ready to kill?
Jenna and Mike. How do they figure into all of this? They are still being questioned by someone in Jeremia
h’s camp. I hope they are being treated well. I’ll have to look into that, I think.
“Where did all of Jeremiah’s men come from?” I ask Ethan. “Where were these soldiers before the attack on Elkhorn?”
“Listen,” Ethan says, “I’m not going to say he’s perfect, but I think he’s a better alternative. At least for the time being. Let’s help him take down Shadowface, and we’ll figure it out from there.”
“This is what you came in here to talk to me about?” I ask. I feel like I’m getting hot. “You act like you want nothing to do with me, and the one time you actually want to talk, you want to talk about helping Jeremiah?” The chair makes a loud scraping noise against the floor as I scoot it away from the table, ready to stand.
Ethan reaches out for me, his fingers resting just in front of mine. “Please,” he says. “Don’t go. That’s not all I wanted to talk about.”
I don’t take his hand. I don’t move at all.
Ethan swallows. “I just…I just don’t know what to think about all this. It has been a really hard month for me.”
“Join the club,” I say.
“Seeing you again is weird.”
“Why, because I shot you?” I ask.
He nods. “Yeah, a little.”
“Haven’t you ever thought that it was really Mitch that shot you? He just used me to do it?”
Ethan sits silently and sets his hands in front of him.
“I have thought about that moment every single day since it happened,” I say. “I’ve wanted to kill Mitch for what he made me do.” The tears start to come back, and this time they don’t stay in my eyes. “You don’t know how much I wanted to turn the gun on him instead. When he told me to shoot you, I tried as hard as I could to stop myself, but couldn’t. It was as if he was inside my body, doing whatever he wanted. I felt like a puppet. Ethan, you remember how it feels, don’t you?”
The Starborn Ascension: Books 1, 2, and 3 (The Starborn Saga) Page 60
