Darkening Chaos: Book Three of The Destroyer Trilogy

by DelSheree Gladden

  “At least we got Helen out,” Milo says. “Think of what the Guardians would have done to them. We saved them from that, at least.”

  He doesn’t say anything about the Seeker.

  Neither do I.

  “Yeah,” I say quietly as I try to dry my tears. I can’t offer him any more than that right now. Defeat pulls my eyes down to my lap. My hands sit there shaking, caked with blood around my knuckles. The deep red startles me. I can’t even remember where it came from. Was it from hitting Blackwood or the nameless dead Seeker? Did I even hit the Seeker? I wanted to, but I can’t seem to remember right now. Does it matter? The blood on my hands goes deeper than a few drips from a bloody nose.

  The phone in my pocket buzzes again. I know it’s Lance. Has anyone else told him yet? Milo and Dean are the only one who would even think to call him, but they’re both driving. He has no clue what’s going on. Telling him in person, I’m not sure whether that will be better or worse. I’m only thinking about me, though. Lance has to be dying for information. I pull the phone out of my pocket slowly. The dozen or more text messages begging me for details are all still unopened. I don’t open them now. Instead, I call him. There’s no way I’m going to tell him over text message. He picks up on the first ring.

  “I have been freakin’ waiting here all morning for someone to tell me what the hell’s going on!” he yells. “You knew I wanted updates! What have you been doing? You should have had them all out by now. Just because you’re off playing hero doesn’t mean you get to forget I’m still here.”

  I let his tantrum taper off. It gives me time to try and compose myself. When the line quiets, I say, “We got Helen and her family, and that’s it. The Ciphers were already … they’re not …” My chest convulses as I try to hold in another sob. “Lance, they already killed them. The Ciphers are dead.”

  Lance doesn’t say anything for a while.

  “Who ordered it? Blackwood?”

  “A Seeker. I don’t know what his name was, but he won’t be giving out any other orders.”

  “What do you mean? Is he dead?”

  I let out a long, trembling breath. “Yes.”

  “You killed him?” The surprise in Lance’s voice is clear.

  “No. It was …”

  “Milo,” Lance interrupts. “Of course it was. There weren’t supposed to be any casualties on their side. They could pin us all down for that. What was he thinking?”

  “I don’t know,” I say quietly.

  Lance growls into the phone. “How many times have I told you he’s dangerous? He’s furious at you for trying to rush off after Braden on an emotional jet, but he goes and does something like this!”

  I close my eyes and let Lance rant. I don’t want the memory of Milo pulling the trigger to replay in my head ever again. Finally, Lance calms back down, though I doubt his frustration toward Milo has cooled.

  “Are you all okay, though?” he finally asks.

  “Yes.” I guess that’s one thing that went right. Nobody I brought with me was hurt.

  “No sign of Braden?” Lance asks.

  “No, they already got to him. I was too late.”

  I don’t miss the muscles in Milo’s arms bunching up. He knows who I’m talking about, and whether he knew it before we came or not, I just admitted that I was planning on trying to rescue Braden today. Nothing will ever change Milo’s mind about finding Braden. And not only because it would be a stupidly dangerous thing to do, either. Milo would just as soon watch Braden fall off a cliff at this point.

  “Libby,” Lance says, “we’ll find him, okay?”

  Choosing my words a little more carefully this time, I say, “I think it’s going to be the other way around.”

  I hear him groan. “He’s already been activated? Great. Okay, from this point on, you’re not to be left alone. Do you understand me?”

  “How are you going to manage that? Your parents are never going to agree to it.” Braden used to be the one to watch over me at night, although Lance was the only one who knew about that. Some of his stuff is still at my house.

  “Are you forgetting that you have house guests?” Lance asks. “Our three new Canadian friends have nowhere else to stay. I think serving as your body guards is an even trade for free room and board.”

  A deep scowl settles on my lips. I hadn’t even thought about where the Canadians would stay. We flew in this morning and came to the compound right after that. My mouth turns down into a scowl. I do not want sleepover buddies right now. But what else can I say, no?

  “We’ll discuss it when you get back to the house,” Lance says. “I’m already here. I convinced the nurse I was still sick and she let me take off. We’ll figure everything out.”

  I’m about to say goodbye, thinking he’s done talking, when he speaks again.

  “Hey, Libby? This isn’t your fault. You know that, right? Nothing you could have done would have stopped this from happening. You did your best. We all did.”

  “I could have come sooner, not gone to Canada. Maybe then they’d still be alive and he wouldn’t have been hurt,” I argue.

  “No. They killed the Ciphers the second they closed the video feed,” Lance says, “and I bet they were working on Braden even before that. You couldn’t have stopped them. We just have to move on from here. We have to pay them back for what they’ve done and stop them from ever doing it again. We’re going to destroy them.”

  I hid under my bed and cried when I finally realized who I was going to become one day. I have spent most of my life wishing I was anyone but Cassia the Destroyer. Hurting people wasn’t something I thought I would do, let alone crave. I want more than anything else at this moment to become the demon most of the world thinks I am. I want to bleed Blackwood and all the other disgusting Guardians like animals in a butcher shop. The anger racing through my veins threatens to consume me until I see the three braided strands of thread wrapped around my wrist, Braden’s gift to remind me of our connection, to remind me that he would never leave me. I finger the bracelet and realize that destroying the Guardians isn’t what I want most.

  “We’ll talk about everything when we get back, okay?” I say.

  His response sounds somewhat confused. I guess that wasn’t what he was expecting me to say. Milo looks over at me strangely as well. He looks like he’s trying to figure out what the other half of this conversation has been about. He’s just going to have to wonder. Lying to Milo is what got me in trouble with him in the first place, but this isn’t one of the conversations I’m going to share with him. I say goodbye to Lance, for now, and spend the rest of the drive hunkered down in my seat, silent.

  Thankfully, Milo doesn’t push me. Even when we get back to my house half an hour later, he doesn’t try to stop me from jumping out of the Bronco without saying anything to him. I want to go hide in my room and stare at my wall of drawings, the ones Braden hung for me only a few days ago, but I only get halfway up the drive when I spot Helen and her family getting out of Dean’s Xterra. I know what they’re about to go through. Abandoning them to face it alone isn’t an option. I hurry forward before I can change my mind and hold out my hands to Helen. She takes them without really looking at me, holding on like she’s afraid the world will tip at any second and dump her into oblivion.

  “Helen, I’m Libby Sparks. Are you and your family okay?” I ask.

  Helen shakes her head slowly as if she’s not really sure. Tears spring to her eyes as she makes herself meet my gaze. “My father’s dead, isn’t he?” she whispers.

  “I …” Did Dean already tell her?

  “He told me when the Guardians let him see us to prove we were still alive that if you came to rescue us it was because he was dead,” she says. Tears slip down her cheeks, but she stiffens her body and tries to hold them back. “Is he really gone?”

  Eight months, that’s how long she and her family have been the Guardians’ prisoners. Every day she must have sat there hoping to be rescued, but also ho
ping not to if it meant her father’s life. That had to be worse than anything the Guardians could have done to her. Her strength honestly floors me, but it shouldn’t, because I knew her dad. He was strange, and a little twisted, but he was also one of the strongest people I’ve ever met. Helen’s eyes beg me for an answer.

  “Yes,” I say, a simple answer to such an agonizing question. I brace myself for her reaction, but except for a momentary tremble, she holds her grief inside. It will all come spilling out eventually, it always does. For now, though, she simply nods.

  “Thank you for coming after us,” Helen says. “I think my dad was a little worried you wouldn’t after what he had to do. After everything he’s told me about you, I knew you would come. Thank you, Libby, and I’m sorry about your friends.”

  “Thanks,” I say, “so am I.”

  Knowing she and her family most likely just want to lie down and maybe forget everything for a few hours, I start to let go of her hands. I stop when I really think about what she just said. She was sorry about my friends. She was down there with them, maybe even saw what happened—I pray she didn’t have to endure that—and I wonder who else she might have seen.

  “Helen, I know you want to rest, but can I ask you something?”

  She nods, but I can see the wary quality in it. Please, I hope she didn’t have to watch the Ciphers die. I shake that thought away quickly.

  “Was anyone else brought into the cell block where you were kept besides the Ciphers? A man, tall, dark hair, his name was Braden?”

  “No,” she says, “I’m sorry, I didn’t see anyone else.”

  My hope plummets to my toes. “It’s okay, why don’t you and your family go inside and get some rest?”

  “Actually, we’d like to go to my dad’s house. One of your friends, Kyla, I think her name was, said she’d drive us. I’d really like to be around things that remind me of him right now.” The corners of Helen’s mouth are twitching. She’s putting on a brave face for me, but the grief and pain are quickly becoming unbearable for her.

  “Of course, Helen, just have Kyla call if you need anything. I’ll do whatever I can to help,” I offer. She smiles gratefully and turns away to head back to the waiting SUV.

  I watch them leave, wishing I could do more than send them off to an empty house. The weight of this morning begins to pull me down. Even though my house is currently filled with people, I plan on heading directly to my room and locking the door for a while. I turn for the house and see Lance stalking toward me. Every bit of anguish, every regret and agonizing pain I have felt this morning is reflected on his face. He hurries his last few steps and throws his arms around me. I bury my head in his chest and let his intimate understanding of everything I’m feeling calm me.

  As soon as he knows I’m ready to talk, he pulls back and looks at me. “Are you okay?”

  “No.”

  Lance’s face crumbles. “I was getting so many terrible feelings from you. I was scared out of my mind that something horrible was happening. Especially at the end.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There was a lot of anger, I expected that, but a few minutes before you called me I didn’t know what to think. Your emotions went completely blank. I thought you were gone for a minute until something else hit. I can’t even describe it, but my entire body went cold,” Lance says. He looks at me with such compassion. “Was that when you found the Ciphers?”

  “No,” I say, recognizing the exact moment he’s talking about because I felt the same way, “that was when Milo shot that Seeker in the head half a second after I told him not to.” I shiver at the memory. “The look on his face …” I pull myself against Lance again and will the memory out of my head forever.

  After a minute Lance pushes me back. “Are you going to be all right?”

  “I will be when I have Braden back,” I say.

  “Yeah, we need to talk about that. If he’s really out looking for you …”

  “There’s no if, Lance. He’s coming. I just don’t know when,” I say. My gaze turns back to my house and worry starts to gnaw at me. “I can guess where he’ll come for me, though. He’s going to show up here. Maybe we should get everyone to leave. They might get hurt if they’re here when he finally comes after me.”

  Lance stares at me like I’ve lost my mind. “You might die if they aren’t here. Everyone is staying. They’re all here to help you destroy the Guardians. That won’t happen if you’re dead, so I’m willing to bet they won’t have a problem facing Braden.”

  “But maybe I do,” I argue. “You know I don’t want to hurt Braden. If he shows up here with everyone at the house, they’ll try to kill him. I can’t let that happen.”

  “Even if he’s trying to kill you?” Lance asks.

  I can’t answer him. I believe in what I’m doing, but I don’t think I could ever kill Braden. Even at the expense of my own life, I don’t think I can do it. Whatever he tries to do to me, I know he doesn’t want to. I know he isn’t in control of himself. How can I kill him knowing that?

  “Libby,” Lance says, making me look at him, “I know I said I’d help you find Braden, but if it’s a choice between him and you, you know I’m going to choose you, right? I won’t let him kill you.”

  “You have to let me try and stop him first,” I say.

  He frowns at the request, but nods. Lance isn’t the real problem, though, and not even Dean, who worshipped Braden before he was taken. Dean will definitely think twice before taking Braden’s life. Milo is the real issue. He won’t hesitate. He’s probably looking for an excuse. I want to at least make him leave the house, but he knows Braden is coming. It will take a miracle to make him step away from me.

  Maybe I can think of something. I think I still have a little time. Braden is very smart, and he knows my group of friends pretty well. He’ll know that after what we just pulled, blood and tempers will be running high. I can’t see him attacking when he knows everyone will be keyed up and ready for a fight. He’ll wait until the adrenaline cools and everyone begins falling into either planning or grieving.

  “Libby,” Lance asks suddenly, “why is there a very angry looking teenage girl standing on the sidewalk behind you? She looks like she’s about to murder someone.”

  I turn around and blink in surprise when I realize he’s right. Hope is, in fact, standing there, without any sign of the Xterra that carted off her parents a few minutes ago. She stares at me, looking angry enough to stop a Sihir in its tracks. I can’t even speak for a moment faced with the intensity of her fury. Her blue eyes are electric, so much so that I almost expect her wispy blond hair to crackle with angry static. Thank goodness my emotional blocks are up and working well enough to counter at least some of her emotional firestorm. Being hit with all that rage would have knocked me over.

  “Hope?” I ask experimentally. She stomps over to me but doesn’t say anything. I try again. “Hope, what are you doing here? I thought you were going with your parents. You should really get some rest and … uh, you’ve been through a lot lately.”

  “I’m not leaving,” she snaps.

  “Um, okay.” I look back at Lance for some help, but he doesn’t seem to have anything to offer. I’m not sure if anyone has claimed any of the guest bedrooms yet, but if you want to …”

  “I don’t want to take a nap,” she says as she marches closer. “I want to get back at the monsters who killed my grandpa. I want to help you. I am going to help you.”

  So close to me, even my blocks are having a hard time buffering her anger. “Sure, okay,” I say, “I won’t turn down help. Why don’t you come inside with me and I’ll introduce you to everyone. We’re going to start planning our next move.”

  Hope simply nods and blows past me toward the house. I look over at Lance and shake my head in surprise. He doesn’t look pleased.

  “Milo is bad enough to deal with sometimes, given how much he hates the Guardians. She’s going to be a million times worse.”


  “Well, what was I supposed to do, tell her no? She’d run off and try to take them all down on her own,” I say.

  “She still may. We’re going to have to watch her, closely,” Lance says.

  No kidding. Braden may have been right about what the Guardians would do to him if they caught him, but apparently he was wrong about not having people jumping at the chance to join me. It’s only one person, I guess, but I’m already wishing he had been right about that one too.

  Chapter 8

  Haunted

  “Look, everyone, I know that after what happened this morning we’re all anxious to run back in and tear the Guardians’ heads off,” I say, “but we can’t. The Albuquerque compound is hopping with Guardians and Seekers right now, and you can bet the security at every other compound is being beefed up at the moment, too. If we attack now, we’re going to get slaughtered. The best thing to do for the time being is start training the Ciphers and gathering intel. Mr. Walters warned us that there’s more we’re going to face than we understand. We have to figure out the clues he left us before we do anything else.”

  “So we’re just going to sit here and wait for the Guardians to come after us?” Hope demands.

  “No,” Lance says. “We aren’t going to wait for anything. The Guardians here have been hurt, yeah, but that doesn’t really help us. Now there are three times as many Guardians running around Albuquerque. Even with the Ciphers, we’re still badly outnumbered, and we’re spread all over the world. We have to train and organize before we can do anything.”

  Angry and anxious, Hope is practically bouncing in her seat. She’s dying to run out and kill something. The others in the room are slightly more reasonable. Daniel and Hammond have just as much reason as Hope to want revenge, but they have also spent decades learning to be patient. Milo is the next person to speak.