The Takeover

by Teyla Branton

  Even if it meant we wouldn’t be there to share it.

  “I love you,” Ritter whispered. “With everything that I am.”

  “I know.” I didn’t have to say how I felt about him because I opened my mind and there it was. He was a part of me, it was that simple. And that complicated. Because I desperately didn’t want to lose him either.

  He caught my finger in his mouth, and his tongue felt rough as it slid over my skin. I pulled my finger and him down to my mouth, and he started kissing me. There was no slow preparation as passion and energy spiked through us. Our weapons and clothes hit the ground in record time. For the moment, we would forget the bleakness of our future, the sacrifice we would be required to give.

  A sacrifice that might not be enough.

  Even those thoughts drained away as Ritter lowered himself over me. There was nothing but the fire in our blood, the movement of his mouth on mine. The touch of his hand. The feel of his body moving against mine. There was no room for anything but this moment and our love.

  It wasn’t until later when I dozed that I had the idea, the one that might change everything.

  I AWOKE TO FIND RITTER glaring at his phone like he wanted to smash it. “Ava wants us back in San Diego.”

  Reality swooped in. I glanced at the curtained window to gauge the angle of the light. There was enough change to see that maybe an hour had passed while I’d been sleeping. “I wonder what took her so long.”

  “She and Dimitri were still en route to San Diego, but she’s back and waiting for Dimitri now. For all of us.”

  “When does she want us?”

  “An hour ago.”

  I took my leg off his. “Well, then, let’s not keep her waiting.” Because my idea had been percolating in my head. It wasn’t all there, but maybe with the rest of us talking about it, we could even out our odds with the Emporium a little.

  “We have to wait for Cort anyway. He’s not going to leave Noah until she secures her people.”

  “I thought I saw a little silent exchange going on between you two. Eye raising and all that.”

  Ritter chuckled. “No way were we about to let Noah go alone. She’s a wildly talented singer, but she’s the worst fighter I’ve ever seen.”

  “Since we’ve trained with Oliver, that’s saying a lot.”

  “He’s not so bad. He’s actually growing on me.”

  We showered, pulled on jeans and T-shirts, and went to alert the others. Patrick was asleep on one of the couches, but Mari and Keene were seated together talking quietly. They looked up as we came in but didn’t move away from each other.

  “Any word from Noah and Cort?” Ritter asked.

  “They finally got the sign-off on the bodies,” Keene said. “They’re transporting them to the safe house where we took the families, and Mari will shift there to bring them back once they’ve arrived. By the way, the New York Renegade passed the families off to Secret Service because there doesn’t seem to be any reason to keep them now that the senators won’t be able to vote.”

  I hadn’t thought of the Georges and the other families not being targets anymore. It was the only positive thing that had come from the past two days.

  “They’re taking them to government safe houses.” The slight mocking tone of Keene’s voice told us how much he trusted those. “But they should be safe enough.”

  Mari scooted forward and clasped her hands together. “So what are we going to do now? Any brilliant ideas?”

  “Well,” Ritter and I said together.

  I turned, looking at him in surprise. He laughed, and I realized that my idea might not have been solely my own since we’d been sharing more than our bodies. I might have borrowed a strategy or two from his mind. Or he’d supplied it. Okay, it might be more his idea than mine.

  “We have some ideas,” I clarified. “But a lot depends on you.”

  “What do I have to do?” Mari asked.

  Ritter shook his head. “We need to talk to Ava about it first.”

  After Mari shifted to the safe house in DC to bring back Noah and Cort, Keene helped her shift us back to San Diego, where Stella had shut off the electric grid to allow us through. Noah stayed behind with Patrick, who wasn’t ready to go anywhere yet, but should be soon enough.

  At the San Diego Fortress, everyone was still waiting for Dimitri to arrive from Kansas, but Ava and Ritter shut themselves up in the conference room with Stella anyway. Cort marched Jeane off to the holding room, and Keene and Mari disappeared somewhere together. I’d no sooner dropped my bag on the floor of my room when Jace knocked on the door, his surface thoughts screaming his worry.

  “Come in,” I called.

  The door opened. “Got a minute?”

  “Of course.” I went to him and hugged him tightly.

  “What’s that for?”

  “For being safe.” I wondered if I could find a relatively safe role for him in the inevitable battle that would play out with the Emporium. But then what about Mari? Cort? Chris? I couldn’t personally assure everyone’s safety. Especially not the one man I wanted to live more than anyone.

  I led Jace to the couch and waited for him to speak. I knew why he was here, and it was finally time that I came through for him.

  “It’s crazy,” he said, glancing up at my large, flat-screen TV, though it was turned off. “Killing all those people.” He hesitated. “I mean, sometimes I’d get to thinking that maybe the Emporium wasn’t all that bad. That their way wasn’t perfect, but if we just worked together, maybe more of them would see mortals as people and understand that there’s room for all of us. Power and money . . . it isn’t everything.” He shook his head. “But now I see that the only way they’ll rest is if we’re all dead and they’re in control of everything. I understand why Ava and Dimitri and Ritter and you and all the others are willing to give your lives to beat them. This means something, Erin. I really understand that now.”

  I put my hand on his arm. “I’m glad. But you know it’s not all of the Emporium. It’s those who are in charge. Look at the reformed prisoners in Mexico. They have no desire to return to the Emporium. And those captives we rescued might still believe they’re gods, but they only want to live out their lives hidden among the mortals. They want to have normal lives. Remember Edgel, that Emporium soldier Keene brought to Stella’s house after Mexico? He had a mortal daughter he loved, and he kept her hidden from the Emporium.”

  “You mean the daughter he blames us for letting die?” Jace rubbed a hand through his hair, spiking it even more than usual.

  “That’s him.” The black man had been more intent on murdering me at our last run-in, and I’d been grateful he hadn’t made an appearance at Ropte’s. “The point is, on some level, he knows his leaders are dead wrong.”

  “Then why is he loyal?”

  “That, I can’t say. But who those leaders are inside, and what they do, doesn’t necessarily trickle down to their children or their followers. Look at Cort and Keene. They aren’t anything like their father.”

  Jace looked at me with those blue eyes that were so much different from my gray ones. “My birth father’s one of them, isn’t he?”

  There it was. No going back. “Remember how I found out that Dimitri was my father?”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Jace nodded impatiently. “The genetically altered sperm Ritter stole from the Emporium—Stefan Carrington’s sperm, it turned out—didn’t arrive on time for our mother’s fertility appointment, and Ava made the decision to use Dimitri’s instead. I know all that, but what does that have to do with me?” Even as the words left his lips, Jace’s eyes grew wide. “They saved it, didn’t they? The stolen sperm.”

  “Back then the Renegades were far behind the Emporium in genetic manipulation. Using that sperm would give them a better chance at the child becoming Unbounded.”

  Jace slapped his legs with both hands and stood jerkily. “I should have known. Hell, I did know.” He paced several feet and whirled around. “I’m
Stefan Carrington’s son? That monster?” His posture and the way those blue eyes flashed made him look like Stefan. Too much like him.

  “Yes.”

  Jace turned again, raking his hands through his hair, stopping partway and pulling on it instead. “I knew it all along. I mean, no one ever said, but I knew. I told myself it could have been someone from the other Renegade cells, someone already dead, like with Mari’s father, but I suspected he was alive—and someone awful, since no one wanted to talk about him. Now I realize I knew all along, only I didn’t want to know, not really.” He groaned. “Ugh, Stefan Carrington.”

  I stood and went to him, placing my arms around his rigid body. “It doesn’t change who you are. It doesn’t change everything you got from Mom or the way Dad raised us. Or how much I love you.”

  Jace stood still, not relaxing in my arms. “It also doesn’t change the fact that because of Stefan, Grandma and Lorrie are dead. That dad almost died. That we lost good people. It doesn’t change that he signed off on the death of four families.”

  “We’re going to stop him. All of them. Ritter and I have a plan.”

  Jace crumpled against me then and started sobbing, his shoulders convulsing with emotion. My little brother who was taller than me, and so much faster and stronger. A man who had learned to take orders and to think before he acted. But also a man who’d vomited after witnessing the Emporium’s brutality, and who looked to his older sister for guidance.

  I held him, rubbing his back and smoothing his hair until the sobbing stopped and his shuddering eased. “Thank you for telling me,” he whispered.

  “You needed to know.” Still, part of me was tempted to knock him unconscious and steal away the memory. But it was a part of him, and I loved him enough to let him become the man he was supposed to become despite—or maybe because of—that knowledge. “I love you,” I told him.

  He smiled and said with a hint of his old teasing, “Then prove it. I need to work off some steam. You up for sparring?”

  I most certainly wasn’t up for sparring. I was tired and worried—and, actually, it sounded really good. “You’re on,” I said. “But I’m channeling.”

  He smirked. “Of course. You wouldn’t be competition otherwise.”

  I punched him on the arm, hard enough to leave a bruise. “You’re going to pay for that.”

  ALL UNBOUNDED WERE TRAINED TO fight, but for those with the combat ability, fighting meant something different. My brother was no different. Though I’d trained longer than Jace and still trained as hard as he and Ritter, Jace could beat me if I depended on my own fighting skills. Only Ritter could beat him now.

  When I channeled Ritter, I was a good match for Jace, but his larger size still gave him the advantage. Only when I channeled Jace himself was I his equal. Because channeling meant I was in his mind seeing what moves he’d use before he used them. Not just anticipating the most likely move, or the responsible move, but what he’d switch up to try to confuse me. Seeing from both his eyes and my own could be a negative distraction when I was fighting someone else, but now that I was more practiced at channeling, it definitely gave me a slight advantage when he was my opponent.

  I feinted with the bo staff in my hands, then carried through instead of feinting after all. Jace slammed his staff into mine, blocking every step. “Ha,” he said. “I knew you’d try that again.”

  He didn’t anticipate my next move, but he dodged just in time, rolling and coming up fighting. For several long minutes, the workout room reverberated with the clash of our staffs. Sweat dripped from my tank into my biker shorts, and hair that had escaped my ponytail clung to my wet face.

  The next instant, I felt Mari, and instead of plunging forward, I stepped back. Jace lunged for me, and I whirled my staff, tapping him soundly but not painfully on the back.

  “Dang it, Mari. You made me lose.” Jace turned to where she was waving at us from the doorway, though she hadn’t used it to find us. I’d felt her shift in.

  Her face lit up. “I did? Great! Glad I could be of service. Your ego needs a little tromping now and then.”

  “Oh yeah? Well, you already did that by choosing Keene over me.” Jace flexed. “But don’t forget that I’m here if you ever need a real man.”

  Mari smirked. “I’ll be sure to pass that on to Keene. Look, I’m only here because apparently you two aren’t picking up your phones. So once again, I’m reduced to playing messenger.”

  “Yeah, yeah, you know you love it,” Jace muttered.

  Mari’s widening smile showed her agreement. “Anyway, Stella sent me to tell you that Dimitri’s here, and everyone is waiting for you two in the conference room. I’ll let them know you’re coming.” With that, she vanished.

  No time to do anything but grab a towel to mop my face and neck. Jace did the same.

  “Ava could have told you mentally,” Jace grumbled. “Then maybe you would have been the one distracted.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Not a chance.” But he was probably right.

  We didn’t chat as we jogged up the stairs, but as we reached the main floor, Jace touched my hand. “Thanks, Erin.”

  I smiled. “Anytime.” His eyes were no longer red, and he seemed calm. It was worth the exhaustion creeping over me now that the adrenaline rush was fading. I reached out to absorb, buoying my energy.

  When we walked into the conference room and all eyes fell on us, I was suddenly aware of the wetness of my half tank and the glistening moisture still on my skin. Keene looked amused, Dimitri concerned, and Ava impatient. Ritter’s eyes met mine and turned even darker. I detected the faintest bit of regret in their depths, and I smiled, remembering how our joint workout sessions usually ended.

  I was surprised to see our Emporium captives, Fenton, Eden, and Bedřich, in the farthermost chairs at the foot of the table. Bedřich’s sandy hair had even been combed and the redness was gone from his eyes. Shadrack and Jeane were present as well, squeezed in on the right side of the table closest to the captives. The presence of these five confirmed that Ava and Ritter had no intention of letting them go free until all this was over. It also told me Ava wasn’t as confident in our plan as she could be, and that she hoped for some additional refinements, even if they originated from an untrustworthy source.

  In other words, we were scraping bottom. My earlier confidence fell a notch.

  I sat in the seat next to Ritter, kitty-corner from Ava, and Jace found a seat farther down. Chris, Oliver, Cort, and even our three mortal guards were present, though these last three were standing behind the captives instead of pulling up the extra chairs we kept in a closet. I was glad to see their vigilance.

  I’d no sooner settled in my seat when Ava began. “A radical offshoot from the Hunters is claiming responsibility for the murders in DC and have released a statement saying the shooting wasn’t targeted, only designed to send a message against all Unbounded. The main branch of Hunters, however, deny any splinter group exists, and Stella tracked the statement to a known Emporium contact. From everything we can determine, the senators’ shooting seems to have been the Emporium’s backup plan all along.”

  “Of course it was.” Ritter put in. “With the New York cell and Homeland Security agents assigned to the senators, it could have only been the Emporium.”

  Jace shifted noticeably in his seat, but he didn’t volunteer a rash plan as he once would have. I looked to Dimitri, instinctively perhaps, for reassurance, but his expression was grim, his face unsmiling. A tremor of fear shuddered through me. Dimitri was the oldest and most experienced Unbounded in our cell. If he was concerned, we all should be. Maybe this plan would get us all killed.

  At that moment, Dimitri felt my stare and lifted his dark eyes to mine. The tension on his face eased and his eyes softened. That outward sign of love allowed me to relax the grip I had on the edge of my chair. Allowed the panic to fade. Dimitri might not have been around when I was learning to skate or stubbing my toe, but I didn’t doubt he had faith in
me, trusted and loved me. I wanted to tell him thanks for being my father. Him and not Stefan Carrington.

  “I won’t beat around the bush,” Ava was saying now. “The outlook is bleak. The replacements for the lost senators will vote with Ropte, and if they don’t, we could see a repeat of what happened here. The Emporium is pulling out all stops. They understand that if we win the vote, they may never achieve their goals. We’ve seen the desperate measures they were willing to go to in Venezuela and Morocco. Shooting our own people here at home is just one more step in their plan.” She paused and looked at several of us in turn. No one spoke or moved.

  “I believe,” she began again, “that it has come down to this simple fact: we beat them now or never. We have never been as strong as we are now. Neither have they, but we have an advantage they didn’t count on: we know the locations of all their headquarters. We have been closely monitoring these locations by satellite and in person with help from our Renegades overseas. So far there has been no unusual activity in those locations, and we’re taking that to mean they haven’t caught on to us yet. Either they believe their people are still with the government or they don’t believe they have anything important to tell us. We can’t expect that to continue. Eventually, when they don’t hear from their people, they’ll assume the worst. We must act now.” She looked at Ritter and nodded.

  “Our idea is to attack their headquarters with full guns,” Ritter explained, “and eliminate, disarm, and capture as many of their people as possible. We do the same simultaneously in all five main headquarters: San Francisco, New York, England, Germany, and Norway. For now, we’re not going to worry about the smaller locations they have in France, Russia, and South America. As long as we take the largest five, the smaller ones won’t be large enough to stand up against us.”

  Cort cleared his throat, clearly wanting to speak. When Ava nodded at him, he said, “I understand what we’re looking at, but we don’t have the manpower. Between us and the New York cell, we’re at twenty-three Unbounded and maybe ten mortals. Thirty-three against what is a consolidated number of Emporium agents in San Francisco and New York. The sixty-plus Unbounded Renegades we have in Europe may be enough to make a dent in those other three headquarters, but they will still likely experience more losses than they inflict.” He paused and held Ava’s eyes before focusing on Ritter. “You are my oldest friend, and I want to support you, but this is suicide. For them in Europe, and especially here in the States.”