“What time is it?” I demand as I pull Joshua from my brother’s arms and rush from the room.
“One-forty-five,” he says. “Why?”
Thursday. Two o’clock. Today. In fifteen minutes.
“Recall everyone,” I seethe. “Isolde is here.”
Zander’s eyes widen and he wastes no time in reaching for the nearest false fire alarm and yanking it downward. No alarm blares. No water sprays from the sprinklers—though I doubt they would be in working order even if Chris hadn’t had the system turned into a hidden warning alarm in place of one for fire. Instead, a strobe blinks incessantly, making Joshua hide his eyes against my chest while the rest of the school explodes into activity.
The Godling children are only partially trained, but they know what the alarms means. The war we have all been waiting for is about to begin.
Without the Gift.
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Old Friends
(Zander)
Everyone moves to the side as we sprint down the hallway. Terrified Godling children are being herded to the basement safe rooms by their teachers. As callous as it sounds, they aren’t my concern. My sole goal is getting to the infirmary where I suspect Van to be working. I’m so focused on getting there, I don’t see Annabelle until she’s beside me, panic etched into her features.
“What’s going on?”
The bad lady is coming, Joshua says.
Only he doesn’t just say it to Annabelle. Everyone in the hall stops dead and stares around themselves in confusion. Annabelle seems to catch on more quickly than most and turns to look at Joshua. Whatever she’s thinking about his new trick, she shakes it off and refocuses. “Isolde? How soon?”
“She’s probably already here,” Oscar growls as he shoves past us and picks up speed.
Annabelle’s eyes widen, and I take her hand to drag her after Oscar. She doesn’t ask any other questions. We’re still a whole wing away from the infirmary when I catch sight of Ketchup’s head bobbing above the rest of the running students. Flashes of Van’s white hair say she’s with him, and relief edges back my panic by a small degree.
Oscar reaches her first and is shoving Joshua into her arms before she has a chance to ask any questions. “Safe room, now,” Oscar demands. “Where is Emily?”
“I don’t know,” Van says in a rush, trying to hold Joshua while clasping Verity’s hand. It’s only then I notice Gyan is in Ketchup’s arms, yet Chris and Cat are nowhere to be seen.
Oscar’s already hard features turn to stone. “I’ll find her. You protect Joshua. Keep him safe. Promise.”
“I promise,” Van says, indecision thick in her expression. I know she doesn’t want to hide, but she’s still not at full strength, and there’s no one else Oscar trusts to protect Joshua. The moment of regret that she’s being sent off with the children vanishes and she offers a sharp nod.
Oscar turns away in search of either Emily or Isolde, I’m not sure which, and I move to follow, but Van grabs my arm. “Be careful,” she says, “and don’t let Oscar kill her with power, okay? I don’t think I can heal him from that.”
I cringe at the idea of her even trying, but nod in promise to both requests. Annabelle throws her arms around the whole group, briefly, before we change directions and sprint for the command center. Something flies at my head. I snatch it out of the air, thinking it’s a weapon of some kind, and realize I’m holding a Bluetooth earpiece.
Looking around to see where it came from, I see Annabelle already putting hers in place and Chris shoving someone off in a different direction. A gun is shoved into my hand to compliment the knives I have tucked away beneath my sleeves. I don’t have a holster, so I shove it into the waistband of my jeans and glance around to take stock. There’s no sign of Oscar, but I doubt he’d be much help in directing a defense anyway. Hoping he finds Emily and gets her to safety, I push my brother out of my mind and stride toward Chris.
“Is Van in position?” he demands.
I nod, trying not to think about the fact that the biggest reason she didn’t push to come with me is because she knows she’s the last line of defense for the children. Gift or not, if we fail, she’ll be the only one who can protect them. Hoping it doesn’t come to that, I take command. “Reports?”
“Southwest sentries haven’t reported in. All others report no sign of attack, but are on standby for your orders.”
My orders. Oscar didn’t bother to share the details of Isolde’s plan before bolting, but I can guess them easily enough. She takes no half measures. Offers no mercy. She isn’t studying us any longer. This isn’t a test. It’s an extermination.
It’s not sinking to her level to be just as ruthless. It’s self-preservation.
“Kill on sight,” I say, my gut twisting with what I know I have to say next. “Only exception is the Richiamos trainees…but only if they can be saved without endangering other Godlings.”
Chris nods, having expected nothing less. Annabelle’s hand slips into mine and squeezes. She’s knows where my thoughts are right now, feels the guilt welling inside me. I may have just ordered execution for Ivy’s little sister. The one person she asked me to save. The only other person in this world she truly loved.
It’s an order I had to give. Van’s vision of the Richiamos trainees showed Sonya and her friend to be something of an exception. The others were happy to lure us to our deaths. I want to keep my promise to Ivy and save her sister, but the Godlings are counting on me to protect them, too. I can’t do both.
Maybe I could if…
“What is it?” Annabelle asks quietly when she feels my body stiffen.
“You don’t have to come with me.”
My cryptic response draws a frown to her lips. “Not going isn’t an option, and you know that.”
Before Chris can try to stop me, I bolt from the room, dragging Annabelle with me. Shouts erupt behind us, but I don’t stop. Chris doesn’t need me to lead the defense of the school. We’ve had the plan in place since we got here. I’m doing nothing in that room. Outside…maybe I can actually make a difference.
“Where are we going?” Annabelle manages to ask as we burst out of the school and head for the southwest corner of the property.
“To wake up my gift,” I grunt.
For a brief moment, Annabelle drags against me. Realization sets in. The danger. The likelihood of failure, of death. The insanity of what I’m proposing. She takes it all in, makes her decision, and is running next to me with barely more than a second lost. “Stay focused,” she says as her power flows into me, calming me, taking away my guilt, fear, and shame so I can center my thoughts on my goal.
Chris’s terse voice erupts in my ear. “You better have a damn good plan, Zander, because I can’t afford to lose you to a pointless act of self-sacrifice.”
Good plan? “It won’t be pointless, either way,” I growl. “If my gift doesn’t wake up and I can’t get to Sonya, I’ll still have taken out a good portion of the Eroi protecting her. That may be all I can do anyway.”
After a moment of silence, he is forced to admit the truth of what I said. “Do what you can,” he says, “but keep me updated.”
A flicker of movement to our right drops us both to the ground. “Active movement near the greenhouse,” I whisper to Chris.
Prickly scrub brush is our only cover as I hold perfectly still, but I feel Annabelle’s power extend. Footsteps slow. The quiet makes me daring and I shift just enough to let me view the Eroi operative standing slack-muscled not ten feet away from us. His expression is relaxed, his eyes closed.
Glancing back at Annabelle, I give her a questioning look and she grins. “For someone who’s never felt at peace, it’s very distracting.”
The irony of what she’s doing strikes me in a way that is both amusing and sad. Her gift of peace is allowing us to sneak closer, essentially becoming a weapon against him, yet there is no doubt the man feels the perfection of her ability. Shaking off the bizarre that seems impossible to esc
ape as a Godling, I stay low and creep toward the motionless enemy.
It almost feels wrong to do anything but sneak past him. The gun in his hand and grenades clipped to his belt remind me of his purpose. He wouldn’t hesitate to kill me, and Annabelle’s range only extends so far. She won’t be able to keep him incapacitated forever. Leaving him alive means leaving him to wake up and continue on, to kill Godling children on Isolde’s order.
I can’t let that happen.
Grabbing the back of his tactical vest, I yanked him down and cut through his carotid artery in less than half a second. His eyes are still unfocused and faraway as his life leaves him. It should make me feel less of a monster to have ended his life so humanely, but it’s better than he deserves and I feel angry instead.
We meet several more Eroi on their way to attack, and leave them lying in the weeds and scrub. I’m beginning to doubt the wisdom of my plan when I pull my knife from the fifth Eroi’s neck with no sign of anything else but more Eroi warriors. If my gift doesn’t wake the hell up and do something, all I’ve done is taken us directly into the Eroi’s hands. Into Isolde’s hands. She might spare my life so she can study me, but she won’t spare Annabelle’s and I won’t let her turn me into a science experiment.
Lying flat on my belly, I peer through a scraggly patch of tall desert grass at a defensive wall of Eroi. Unmoving, they hold their guns at the ready, eyes trained on the school, as though they’re waiting for something. But what?
“What are you seeing at the perimeter?” I ask Chris.
There’s a moment of delay before he answers me. “Preliminary troops moving inward, all sides, with reinforcements hanging back at the perimeter. No sign of Richiamos involvement.” He pauses, then asks, “Why?”
“Are they testing our defenses, or are we missing something?” I ask.
Next to me, Annabelle shifts, rising up on her elbows to stare more boldly at the Eroi. “We’re missing something,” she says quietly. I reach for her when she begins to stand, panicked that they’ll kill her with a headshot, but she shrugs me off and faces them. “They’re…excited,” she says. “Already feeling victorious. They expect to win this battle, know they have the upper hand.”
Standing as well, now, I shiver at the sight of the zombie-like Eroi in front of Annabelle. “Are you sure it’s not just…you making them feel that way?” I ask.
She nods slowly, frowning as she moves closer to them. Instinct tells me to hold her back, but she knows what she’s doing. Barely a few feet from the nearest Eroi, she asks, “Why are you so confident?”
I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised when the woman answers, but I am. She looks straight through Annabelle and says, “Because Isolde is the Matchmaker.”
No.
Yanking the gun from the back of my jeans, it takes only a few seconds to dispatch the numb Eroi. Annabelle’s eyes are wide when my gaze finally reaches hers, but she doesn’t comment on my abrupt actions. “What did she mean?” she asks.
“Isolde is going to use Sonya against Oscar.”
Turning back the way we came, I sprint for the school. I should have known she would go after him. All the time I pretended to work for her gaining information from the Godlings, Oscar was the one she really wanted. Something sparked in her the moment she met him at the compound. At the time, I hadn’t known anything about her ability to match make Godlings with Richiamos. That must have been why she wanted to study Oscar so badly. She knew from the first moment that Sonya would be his undoing. We sat around, too busy hunting down the Godling deserters, giving her all the time she needed to plan her coup.
“Where is Oscar?” I bellow into the headset. “Find him now!”
Chris’s response is immediate. “MIA. No one’s seen him since the alarm went off.”
“Emily?”
“Same.”
Dammit, Oscar! Where are you?
It’s the last thought in my mind before paralyzing pain hits me and I stumble to the ground. Annabelle’s scream pierces straight through me, but I can’t do anything to help her. I don’t even know what’s going on! My stomach rolls as I force myself onto my stomach, shoving my arms beneath my body in an effort to rise, to find Annabelle, to protect her from whatever this is. Nothing is working right. My hunger rages, takes control. I can’t think straight enough to function. Feeding is all that matters. Consuming. Devouring.
A child’s whimper is the only thing capable of breaking through to me, and even then, I barely register it. My hands tighten, and I feel something beneath them, but I can’t force my eyes open to see what they’re doing. Hunger twists my thoughts, bending them to its will. Helpless to disobey its need, I squeeze tighter. The sound comes again, bringing with it memories of Van as a child, of her sobbing when kids made fun or her or hit her or threw things at her and she wasn’t allow to defend herself. She’d been taught to let it happen, to save herself by being a victim.
Just like Ivy.
My eyes fly open as familiarity slices through me. Horrified to find my hands around a young girl’s throat, the shock is barely enough to break my hunger’s hold on me. I tear my hands away from her, but they spring back when she collapses. This time I’m prepared for my hunger to fight me and I slam the door shut on my control. Annabelle is curled into a ball, sobbing as she tries to fight her own hunger and withstand the onslaught of pain this child is inflicting on her, simply by being Richiamos. As much as it kills me to see Annabelle tortured like that, I tear my gaze away from her and focus on the limp body in my arms.
“No,” the girl rasps, “you’re supposed to…”
Her twisted plea breaks me. “No, I’m not.”
Accepting Ivy’s pain that first night was strange and frightening. The second time, when I took her pain in preparation to kill David, accepting it felt right, even when taking on that much pain felt like I was ripping myself apart. This time, with the life of a little girl who couldn’t have been more than six years old quite literally in my hands, accepting her pain gives me true purpose.
Cracking the door on my hunger, I unleash just enough to siphon off the agony radiating from her little body. Immediate pain is consumed first, then hurts that lie deeper, all the way down until a ragged sob of relief is drawn from her body. The pain she has lived with her entire life, driven her nearly mad and convinced her parents she had to be turned over to the Eroi, flows into me. It builds up, morphing into power that begs to be used for something better than killing. Giving into it, the one-way pull becomes circular beauty as my power rushes into her body and heals the damage I caused. As I do, Annabelle calms and rolls up to her knees to stare.
Healing brings familiarity. The taste I once associated only with Ivy resonates deep within me. The center of my power breaks open and spills outward, strands of my gift streaming from my body to pinpoint the location of the approaching Richiamos. All thirteen of them. Most are coming in from the perimeter as this girl did, tempting Godlings and leading them to their deaths at the hands of Eroi waiting for them. Only one Richiamos has deviated and is moving straight for the back entrance of the school.
Sonya.
And wherever Sonya is, that’s where I’ll find Isolde…and Oscar.
My thoughts scatter when the girl flings herself into my arms. “Thank you,” she bawls. “Sonya told us…but I didn’t…believe.”
“Sonya told you what?” I ask, wanting to comfort her but desperate to get to Oscar and end all of this before Isolde destroys him.
“That Isolde was wrong, that Godlings could make us better, more than Isolde ever could,” she sobbed. “Nobody believed her.”
Overwhelming grief hits me. The only Richiamos who knows the truth is about to be used as the ultimate weapon against us. Ivy tried to save her sister by sharing what she’d learned, but didn’t have enough time to free her, and asked me to do what she couldn’t. Failing her isn’t an option.
“We can make them believe her,” I tell the girl, “if you’ll help me.”
Her eyes are big in her little face, but she nods shakily.
“What’s your name?” I ask as I stand slowly and set her feet on the ground. Her fingernails dig into my hand, terrified of letting go.
“Chloe,” she whispers.
“Chloe, are you ready prove Isolde wrong and save your friends?”
Her entire body is quivering. Fear nearly strangles her, but she has suffered more than most people will in an entire lifetime. Fear, pain, terror, these are old friends to her, ones she now knows don’t have to rule her life. Lifting her chin, she says, “Yes.”
Chapter Thirty: Blameless
(Vanessa)
The youngest kids are huddled against the back wall, clinging to each other as they try to be brave. They know their parents and older siblings are out fighting the Eroi. Even as young as they are, they understand the risk, the reality that they may never see them again. Terrified eyes watch me as I pace. Silently, they beg me for reassurance or answers. I don’t have either. I don’t even know what’s going on out there!
Joshua’s laugh draws my gaze and I shake my head. How can Ketchup sit there playing games with him like that? Verity and Gyan are crowded around them as well, taking turns entertaining Joshua by moving their power so he can follow it. Ketchup’s games are less unusual, stealing Joshua’s nose or turning his hands into a church with his fingers being the people inside. It could have been a regular afternoon if only they were visible, and not the frightened kids waiting for their deaths.
Where’s Mommy?
I spin around in search of the source. Everyone else in the room has frozen, except Ketchup, who seems oblivious to the voice.
Aunt Van, where’s Mommy?
Turning slowly, I know the voice calling me Aunt Van can only mean one thing, but I’m having a tough time believing it. “Joshua?”
He’s staring right at me, his face scrunched in annoyance. Where’s Mommy? Daddy said he was going to go get her.
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