by Shea Berkley
They killed all those people just to get to me.
The heat of magic surges under my skin, and I breathe deep, searching for control. I don’t like getting pushed around.
I wave Wyatt over. “How far away is my dad?”
Wyatt crosses his arms over his chest. “If you’ve noticed, we’re not exactly in a state-of-the-art militarized zone. There’s no GPS or damn walkie-talkies around here.”
“Give me a rough estimate.”
“Probably 23 klicks, which means they’re close enough to hear a bomb go off, but too far away to get here any time soon when it does. So yeah, we’re screwed.”
I slap Wyatt on the shoulder and smile, one I hope isn’t tainted by my own fear. “Have a little faith, will you?” I call over a handful of soldiers and tell them to gather up the dead bodies of our enemy and send Reece to tell our men on the other side of the gate to do the same.
“And how is a bunch of dead guys going to help us?” Wyatt asks.
“I’m hoping when their commander sees them pointing bows and arrows at their own army from atop the wall, it’ll make him think they’ve joined us.”
“It’s a long shot.”
The doubt in his voice attacks my shaky confidence, and I snap, “You got a better idea?”
“Nope.” He smacks his hand on my shoulder and gives it a squeeze. “You’re doing good…for a guy who’s only real talent is starting campfires. Stay calm and don’t let them see you sweat. I’ll get everyone ready.”
As Wyatt jogs off, Leo shakes his head, his dark hair swishing across his forehead as he does. “A campfire starter? Really? He doesn’t know you at all.”
But he’s observant. I’m sweating like a pig in a fire pit. “He will soon enough. And so will the Rodarians.”
Stay calm. Don’t sweat. I repeat the words in my head over and over as I pace. The area continues to fill with soldiers and those willing and able to fight. Although Wyatt is here, everyone will be looking at me for direction. I have to stay focused and appear as though I know what I’m doing.
I’m not ready. I’m seriously not ready for this.
As I swipe my sleeve across my damp forehead, a low, full laugh sounds. It’s then I see Lucinda lounging near a cart filled with produce abandoned the moment the enemy arrived at our gate. She picks her way through a basket filled with small dried fruit like the finicky cat she can turn herself into, and finding one to her liking, pops it into her mouth. She raises her eyes to me. “Your plan won’t work.”
Both Leo and I grow still. “Do you know something I should?” I ask.
She licks each finger clean and then eyes me coolly. “Just that they might be ugly, but they aren’t as stupid as you’re hoping they are.”
I hate that she’s voicing what I’m trying not to think about. “Thanks. Now can you stop eating and find something useful to do?”
“I already have.” She waves her hand toward the street behind us, and I see people move apart as the Seven Sisters make their way through the crowd. They’re breathtakingly beautiful and fierce, and unlike Lucinda who’s become more annoying than threatening because of her love of Leo, the sisters scare the piss out of me.
“Why is it I don’t trust them?”
Lucinda rises and stretches her arms over her head. Her ridiculously long hair that she’s unbraided in order to groom herself, which she constantly does when not causing trouble, billows around her in a veil of pure white. “You have good instincts…well”—she drops her arms and gives a languid shrug—“most of the time.”
“It hurt to say that, didn’t it?” She busily inspects her nails, and I let the gibe pass. “I thought you told them they could leave? Why are they still here?”
“They’re here because of him.” She points to Wyatt, who’s in deep conversation with a few of his men. “Although I don’t see the appeal.”
“They’re fighting for Wyatt?” Leo has the same confused look on his face that I probably do.
“Hardly.” At my continued confusion she sighs as if I’m as stupid as I feel. “Don’t mistake their obedience for loyalty.”
“I don’t with you,” I say, then realize what I’ve said aloud and slant a nervous glance her way.
Lucinda’s throaty laugh catches me off guard. “You know me well.” She crooks her pale finger at me, and when I draw close, she says in secret tones, “They fight only for themselves, and once you allow them in, it’s not easy to push them out.”
“So they may never leave?”
She shrugs again. “They are sirens at heart and need victims just like we do.”
I pull away and stare at her. She’s lumped me in with her and the likes of the Seven Sisters. I know why. It’s all about power and control. The more I exert it, the more I like it and crave more. Just like her. Just like them.
Showing me a wide, toothy smile, she saunters over to Leo and curls her body around him. He coos in her ear and sweeps his hand down her hair before caving in to her desire for a kiss.
Leo is her victim. It couldn’t be plainer if she shouted it from the rooftops. It doesn’t matter what I say about her. Leo won’t listen. He’s made his decision and he’s sticking to it. For some reason, he believes in her. In everything else he’s so calm. So careful. It makes me wonder. Despite all the bad things I see in her, maybe there’s something good, something I haven’t seen. Because, despite all my flaws, Kera loves me. She believes in me…
I rub my eyes, tired of thinking, of always being on guard. I’ve learned to trust Leo’s judgment. I can’t stop now. It’s time I stopped acting like a human and started being a first. I can’t obsess about Lucinda and her ulterior motives. War is on my doorstep.
Leo extracts himself from Lucinda and follows me as I go in search of what I need. Although we haven’t known each other long, I can see the worry he holds in his dark eyes. “What’s the plan if they don’t take the bait?”
“I’ll think of something.”
Most of Teag’s weapons are traditional. Only recently have they started using guns and cannons. It was explained to me like this: By law, killing should be conducted face-to-face. A man should never hide behind an instrument that is indiscriminate or impersonal. Ending a life should be unpleasant.
Leo isn’t easily put off. “Don’t lie to me. You already have a backup.” He sidesteps a cannon being wheeled toward the gate. “As a reminder, the last time you got that look in your eye, we nearly died.”
He’s so melodramatic. “Haven’t you heard? Death is only the beginning.”
I find the bag of weapons we brought along and search for a mechanized slingshot and a couple of nasty little balls that dig into their target on landing and explode, a tool the firsts think of as more personal than a gun. Go figure.
“No.” Leo grabs my arm and forces me to face him. “I’m pretty sure death is the end of life, even here in Teag, and I’m still young enough to be fond of living.”
The truth would send him over the edge. He’d do something crazy, like think he could talk me out of doing what I know needs to be done. I tuck the slingshot in my belt and pocket the balls. “All I want is a little conversation.”
I start back toward the gate, and Leo’s long legs bring him quickly beside me. “That’s my worry. Lately, conversation with you usually ends with someone dying.”
It’s not my fault nobody listens to me.
The soldiers line up and we march to the Water Gate. It’s named that because of the big well positioned in the middle of the converging streets. When we reach the area, our troops stop behind the well, away from the gate, shields raised, weapons in hand. I spy a dozen of our soldiers atop the wall, hovering over the entrance, arrows notched on their bowstrings. What I don’t see are any dead Nightmare Men.
“How’d they get in without us doing any damage to them?”
Leo looks down and says tightly, “I don’t know. One minute they were there, the next they were inside and out of range.”
Reece appear
s with the other men, and with him Kera, her incordium blade strapped to her hip and her bow and arrows slung close to her back. Behind her trots Halim, his face splattered with blood, his dagger stained red. At my questioning look, Reece shrugs. “Don’t ask me where she came from…and the kid killed one of them just before the guy was about to kill one of ours.”
Kera marches up to me, her long dark braid snaking irritably down her back as she moves. She stops just shy of stepping on my toes. Her hand twitches on her sword hilt and her eyes narrow until all I see are slivers of hot violet. “I told you to call for me when you needed help. Never leave me behind again. Ever.”
How did she even know? She was across the city at the coliseum tending to the sick. I reach out for her. “Baby, I didn’t—”
She throws up her hand, smacking mine away, and cuts off my apology. “Ever.”
“How am I supposed to protect you if—”
She leans forward, her skin hot with anger and her eyes burning into mine. “Ever!”
I lean back, expecting her head to start spinning and her eyes to shoot flames. I’ve never seen her this angry. “Yeah, okay.”
She pulls back, twirls around, and everyone jumps out of her way as she moves through the crowd, her skin still humming with energy.
Halim steps into the space she vacated. His lips spread wide. “I told you, you need me.” He wipes his face, smearing the droplets of blood down his cheek like war paint.
I’m pretty sure having Halim witness this violence would be considered child abuse in the human realm, not to mention giving him a weapon and pointing him toward the enemy with a go-get-’em thumbs-up as he expects. The kid just won’t stay put. “What am I supposed to do with you?”
“Let me do what I know I can do.” The confidence in his face has me groaning.
Reece comes up behind Halim. “I’ll keep tabs on him. I have a way to make him behave.”
Clearly I’ve lost control. “Fine, just make sure whatever damage he does, it’s to them and not himself.”
Halim rolls his eyes. “I can take care of myself.”
Oddly enough, I believe him.
Out of sight of our enemy, one by one, the dead Nightmare Men are carted to the top of the wall with the use of ropes and pulleys. It’ll take more time than what we’ve got to get them all up there. Time’s up. I catch Wyatt’s eye, and he signals the men to get ready. I nudge Leo. “You got my back?”
“You know I do.”
“Good, cause they’re really not going to like me in about five minutes.”
“Really?” Lucinda, who’s standing beside Leo, says with a bored blink of her eyes. “How odd. I could barely tolerate you within two.”
“He grows on you,” Kera says as she takes her place on the other side of Leo. Wyatt and his men fall in behind us. It’s a show of force I’m after. And I’m hoping they’ll think I have more men waiting in the side streets they can’t see.
Leo’s dark eyes grow wary. “What are you going to do?”
“Relax.” I give him a wicked grin. “All I’m going to do is introduce myself.”
Picking a Fight
It’s not lost on me that the Rodarians’ show of force could be a big hook to get me to leave the rest of the Ruined City unprotected. Night is coming and with it a chance to sneak around our defenses. Wyatt has gathered as many soldiers as he feels we can spare from other parts of the city. I have a solid show of protection surrounding me as we step into view of the Water Gate. The Rodarians stand just beyond the gate, still as statues.
Quick estimate. They have five hundred men to our one hundred and thirty. And that’s just the ones I can see. Wyatt believes more are hiding out of sight, just like I’m hoping they think we’ve got more men. My stomach knots up at the odds.
“Rodarians don’t have the same power as the firsts,” Kera quietly informs me as we move forward. “They’re limited. When they change, they can’t morph all the way. A little bit of themselves is always visible.”
“And the Nightmare Men?”
“No one knows about them.”
Something isn’t adding up. Why use the Nightmare Men when they’re so easy to kill? They aren’t very nightmarish.
The closer we get, the better I can see the mass of men outside our walls. The small knot of Nightmare Men is easy to find, but it’s the Rodarians who surprise me. They’re all the same size, same dark hair, same mottled skin and savage look to their dark-red eyes. They’re like toy soldiers, one barely discernible from the next. Even the commander looks exactly like his troops, except he has an abundance of medals hanging from his jacket and a scar running down his cheek.
We stop just inside the city walls. The commander nods, but oddly, it’s the man beside him, a hulk of a Nightmare Man, who comes forward. The visible tendons in his neck bulge against the exposed bones. He stops a few feet away, his gaze roaming over me as if sizing me up and finding me lacking.
I don’t waste time. “I heard you wanted to see me. Too bad the men you sent didn’t find me before I found them.”
Air wheezes in and out of his lungs in a bad Darth Vader impression. “Where are they?”
“Your men? Close…and a little out of breath.”
“We propose an exchange.” He lifts his hand and a woman is brought forward, a first by all appearances, holding a whimpering two-year-old boy on her hip. Behind her, a dozen men stand with their hands tied behind their backs and their faces bloodied and bruised.
If these are really firsts, I have to completely change my tactics. I stare at the woman, willing her to look at me, but she holds her child tightly against her chest and stubbornly looks down at the ground. They all do.
“Give me a moment.”
“Of course.” Politeness coming from his mouth sounds strange.
“No way,” Leo whispers when our small group huddles together. “They can’t be ours.”
“Are you sure?” Wyatt asks.
“Pretty sure.”
“You have to be 100 percent positive,” he says.
“Nobody went out through this gate. That doesn’t mean they didn’t find them somewhere else.” Leo shakes his head. “I’ve been staring at that mob for three hours. They’ve just been standing there, as if they’re waiting for something.”
“Waiting for what?”
“I don’t know. They’re creepy, but I swear this is the first time I’ve even seen hostages.”
I turn to Kera, who’s staring at the Rodarians. Her skin is flushed and dark; spidery veins slip into the whites of her eyes. She’s using magic, and not the run-of-the-mill kind. It’s dangerous. I touch her, and her hot skin quivers under my hand. The darkness to her eyes fades and she blinks. Hard.
I rub her arms, bringing her gaze to mine, and I fill my voice with concern. “What’re you doing?”
“What needs to be done.” She slants her gaze at the prisoners. “Watch them.”
Kera goes back into her dark magic, and I turn and stare at the prisoners. The woman, as if fighting an invisible hand, raises her head and it’s then I see it, a flash of a Rodarian red eye before one of her comrades shoves her head back down. I’m not sure what to think. Because Kera tapped into the darkness within her, she was able to force the Rodarians to reveal their deceit, but I can sense how difficult it is for her to push that darkness back into its cage.
I clasp Kera’s hand and give it a squeeze. “Don’t use that magic again. It’s too unstable. I can feel you struggling with it.”
“I have it under control.” She eases her hand from mine and her back stiffens. “Besides, we have no choice but to use what is available.”
I don’t want to accept that to win this fight, Kera must risk herself by using my dad’s dark magic. When I face our group again, I’m so mad, my voice shakes. “It’s a trick. We’re changing plans. Are we ready?”
Wyatt looks at the men still in the process of hauling the dead to the top of the walls. “Ready enough.”
“I alre
ady hate these dudes,” Leo says as his fingers whiten around his sword hilt.
“On my signal, then.”
Wyatt nods, and Leo looks between us. “You guys have a signal?”
“Yeah,” Wyatt whispers sarcastically. “Three caws and a yip.” He pulls away, his jaw tense. “Get a life, dude.” He slowly eases back toward his men.
I force Leo to look at me. “Do you have my back?”
“I told you I did.”
“Good, because corpse parts are about to start flying.”
I mold my face into innocent confusion before I turn around and walk back to the ugly guy. “An exchange?” I act unsure.
“It’s simple.” The Nightmare Man’s tone implies I’m stupid, which is exactly what I want him to believe. “My men for these poor simpletons.” His lips crack open to show jagged teeth, exposed jawbone, and a black tongue.
“If you’re sure…”
I step back and let loose a piercing whistle. Wyatt signals his men and the bodies of the dead Nightmare Men cascade over the walls on each side of the gate. They drop to the ground where they oddly crumple and splinter apart.
“A little worse for wear,” I say, “but they’re all yours.” Anger shoots through my veins, and I step forward and snarl, “Keep your captives. They seem happier with you.”
The “captives” suddenly morph back into Rodarian soldiers and slip into their ranks.
The Nightmare Man’s bone- and leather-laced chest heaves; his nostrils flare amid the exposed bone and tendons of his face. I guess he wasn’t expecting I’d call his bluff. If I could be burned by his stare, I’d be a heap of ash, but he’s delusional if he thinks I’ll be threatened easily. I step even closer, and Leo puts a restraining hand on me.
Nightmare Men? I don’t think so. I yank free and glare unafraid into the ugliest face I’ve ever seen.
That I’m actually challenging him makes the tendons in his cheeks stretch and his teeth gnash. “Where is your father, boy?”
“He has better things to do than deal with you. So do I. Go home, and I just might let you live.”
