by Trisha Leigh
Pax and I just have to keep them there while Lucas gets to Deshi. He should be able to handle a couple of guards, if that’s still all that’s between us and our fourth.
I’m hoping Deshi will give Lucas some help once he realizes what we’re attempting. Although, given he’s been stuck with the Others since the beginning, he might not even know what he’s capable of, and we don’t have the time to explain it. I hope he’s a fast learner.
Once the four of us are together, it should tip the scales in our favor. Cadi said more than once that our parents, when linked together, are more powerful than the rest of the Others combined. I’m assuming that applies to us in at least half strength, so getting out shouldn’t be a worry.
If we can get to Deshi. If he’s able to help us. If he’s alive.
Behind the trash pile, I push the ifs out of my mind as the three of us take a few minutes to collect ourselves. It’s like we should say something, but the right words don’t exist. Or if they do, I’m not wise enough to pull them from my mind for what might be one of our last coherent moments together.
All I can think is that I’ve hidden too much from them, when it comes to what the Others—particularly Kendaja—are capable of. I thought it best not to frighten them or make them feel worse about the torture I survived, but now that they’re facing it, too, maybe it would have been better if they were prepared.
There is no real way to prepare for such a thing, though, and the hope still remains that we’ll make it out of the Underground Core safely. The three of us hold a power with so much strength and depth it sometimes scares me, and with Deshi on our side it will be even stronger.
Our parents, we’ve agreed, are the problem. They’re stronger than we are, and unpredictable, like the Old Maid. They’re shuffled in a deck of cards and we have no way of knowing when or if they’re going to pop up. Or whether they’re going to be with us or against us.
We can’t know until we step through that door and follow Lucas into the dark. I would follow him anywhere, and Pax, too. I know they feel the same way about me.
And so we go.
The three of us step single file through two heavy metal doors and into a pitch-black tunnel. The smell of wet stone, which has permeated our day, grows stronger until it clings to my skin, making it clammy and too cool. It’s too quiet, with nothing but the sound of trickling water and the crunch of our footsteps across dirt and gravel to make me believe we’re not in a tomb.
Not that I want to be greeted with cake and a butt kicking, but this is almost as bad. Definitely creepier. Then the winding, dense tunnel opens up into a huge cavern. The room we’re standing in isn’t very wide across, but it stretches what looks like miles to the right. To the left is an arched cutout in the mossy rock, and through it is the room Lucas described, with two long tables flanked by benches. They’re full of Wardens in familiar tan-and-black uniforms, playing cards with those colored, round pieces of plastic—chips, Pax called them—piled in the middle of the games.
The ceiling hovers an eternity away, dripping stalagmites toward the floor like suspended knives, and in front of us, along the opposite wall, rises the most rickety staircase in the history of stairs. At each landing a cage that’s made out of a slick, hard substance is tacked off to one side. It’s hard to tell at this distance, but it looks as though the cages are made from the same material the Others use in their Observatory Pod—the one that was totally resistant to my fire. Some sort of marble, I remember thinking at the time. They’re small, maybe only four feet deep by five wide, and eight feet tall. There are no visible doors, as Lucas said, only six-inch-thick bars wrapping the whole structure, maybe room for an arm to squeeze between them but nothing more.
The stairs twist haphazardly at each turn, drifting toward the center of the room, then back toward the wall, then to the left with no apparent reasoning behind the shifts. The last cage that’s visible from the floor is at least thirty stories up, and pretty much in the center of the room. Cables run up from above the last landing into the darkness that must end at the top of the cave at some point.
“Holy waste buckets,” Pax whispers. He glances at Lucas. “You didn’t quite describe it well enough, Winter.”
“I was distracted. Deshi’s up there.” Lucas points straight up. “In the last one.”
We take a final step out of the shadows at the same moment as the forty or so Wardens rise from the tables and take deliberate steps in our direction. Whether we tripped some sort of alarm system is a mystery, but our arrival definitely hasn’t shocked them.
“So much for the element of surprise,” I mutter through clenched teeth.
The three of us move with deliberate steps across the room, turning around to keep the group of advancing Wardens at our front. They’re coming fast, though, and we end up walking backward so quickly it’s hard not to trip and fall.
The pieces of gleaming black metal in their hands are foreign to me, but some kind of instinct throws me flat on the ground when they point them at us. Pax and Lucas hit the deck beside me, not a second before black gooey globs fly from the end of the weapons and splatter with wet whaps on the staircase and stone wall behind us.
I turn my face to the side, the cool dirt relieving the heat in my cheeks, and meet Lucas’s eye. “Go. Pax and I have got this.”
Pax snorts but raises a hand and blows the black weapons from the Wardens’ hands. It doesn’t stop them, and farther back in the crowd more of them hold similar items, but it’s a start.
“Lucas, go. Now.”
He nods, jaw clenched as he surveys the room for his best chance to scramble for freedom. Our eyes meet again, and I know the grim determination locking down my emotions reflects in his rigid gaze. It doesn’t stop him from leaning in and pressing a hard, lightning-quick kiss to my lips.
“Ugh. Gross. A little help, here, Summer.” Pax’s tight request pulls my attention from Lucas’s retreating form.
We need to give him cover, but when I look at Pax, he jerks his head backward, toward where the gooey stuff splatted. My eyes follow his indication, which is when it becomes clear the stuff isn’t stuff at all, but some kind of life-form. Gelatinous and black, they slurp through the dirt on the ground, leaving clean, shiny stone in their wake. Their shapes change with each pull forward toward Pax and me. They’re essentially pushing us closer to the Wardens, and while I don’t have the slightest clue what they are, I am sure I don’t want them to touch me.
“Althea! Duck!”
I flatten against the floor again, trusting Pax’s command without a second thought, as more of the disgusting creatures thwap into the structures behind us. That makes at least twenty. I toss three or four fireballs at the front of the line, taking out at least six Wardens with that single effort.
A sucking sensation against my calf registers the second before unbelievable pain sears my skin.
I twist around, trying my best to stay low and not to scream in agony. One of the dirt-eating slugs has dissolved my jeans and attached itself to my calf. The awareness of my skin melting sizzles into my nerve endings, dissolving into a throbbing burn that licks its way up my leg and down to my foot.
It slips through my fingers when I try to pry it off, morphing into one shape, then another before my grasp is good enough to rip. “Pax,” I pant. “Help.”
My breath comes in gasps. If I let it out all at once I won’t be able to regulate my reaction enough to not pass out.
“Oh, not good. Here.” He throws a leg over mine, trapping the infuriatingly slimy thing under his leg, then tosses more cyclones of air at the Wardens. His leg squashes the slug enough that I can grab one side and pull, and the relief as it separates from my tissue is immediate. I toss it hard across the room. The skin underneath the blob has disappeared, melted off the sides of my legs until globs of fat and muscle show through, and I look away before I pass out.
Another one gloms on to my exposed ankle, but oddly, there’s no pain. I use the ground to trap it,
then rip it free. A solid sheen of what might be bubbly saliva coats the inside of my ankle, and the skin is tinged pink, but it’s not marred like my calf.
There’s no time to wonder about why the wounds are different while more of the buggers quiver slowly toward us—one has burned the rubber off the bottom of Pax’s shoe. The good part is they don’t seem to have minds of their own, simply moving forward and sucking. It makes me feel better about obliterating them, which I do with an inferno that has Pax drawing his knees up to avoid the blaze.
The skin-dissolving things dot the ground behind us like puddles of oil, gyrating of their own accord and leaving me positive that they’ll re-form and come after us before too long. Instead of worrying about it, and to take my focus off the pain gnawing from my calf up toward my abdomen with giant, serrated teeth, I turn back to help Pax.
He’s blowing up a heck of a storm, lifting some of the tables from the next room and adding poker chips and cards to the swirling melee. The chunks of wood that find their mark keep those Wardens down, joining the ones that caught my fireballs.
Some of the Wardens are tossed through the air, rear over elbows, but they mostly land on their feet. Even if they don’t, it doesn’t take them long to rejoin the group pushing their way forward into the wind. A few more slam into the cavern walls hard enough to fall unconscious. I can only hope there are broken bones or internal injuries serious enough to keep them down for a while.
All in all, we’re doing a fair amount of damage. But they’re still coming.
Chunks of my hair rip free from my ponytail, obscuring my vision. It’s hard to hear over the howling gale. I press my hands to the ground, urging fire toward the Wardens. It stops them at first, but the ground is simply dirt and rock; it can’t sustain the flames for very long. I toss handfuls of flames, at first directed at individuals, then at entire columns. At least half of the original forty Wardens are still bearing down on us.
Pax throws a few more of our pursuers into the wall, a sheen of sweat breaking out on his olive complexion as he pales. I’m panting from the effort, too, and combined with the pain in my leg, it’s hard to know how long we can keep it up. I grit my teeth and take out two more, and Pax gets another, until only ten are left.
Then at least a hundred more spill through the limestone archway, tan-and-black, crisp, hands full of shining weapons. The sight of Zakej and Kendaja off to one side jumps my heart into my throat.
And that’s before I notice Pamant standing smack-dab in the middle.
“What are we going to do?” I shout, slinking backward against the rough, pitted wood of the staircase.
Splinters stab through my sweatshirt, pricking my skin, but I barely feel it. Sweat plasters my hair against my neck and forehead as I struggle with the heat still simmering, mixing with my terror.
Huge rocks, each bigger than a rider, crash from the ceiling, slamming into the floor and causing tremors hard enough to knock me to my knees. They keep coming, raining down, narrowly missing Pax and me as we lunge one way and then another, tangling together then apart as Pamant tries to crush us like bugs.
The weapons fire again, and there’s no time to think about getting out of the way. Black goo creatures slam into my chest and hair, knocking the wind out of me. I fall to my knees, gasping for breath and struggling to tear them free before they eat away my clothes, until I don’t have any skin left at all.
Pax grunts with the effort of freeing himself. Strands of red hair drop beneath me as I scratch out the creature stuck to my scalp. My fingertips are raw and bloody from the effort. When I’m rid of them and look up, the Wardens are less than twenty feet away.
It’s a trap, a death trap, to run up the stairs, but we have nowhere else to go.
“Upstairs,” I pant, grabbing Pax’s hand and hauling him behind me.
He hops on one leg, stomping loose the last of his flesh eaters, and we run.
CHAPTER 26.
Up, up, up—the stairs go on forever, exactly as they looked from the ground. The cages rocking back and forth at each landing have been empty so far, thank goodness. My gut clenches every time we pass one, even though I’m not sure who I’m terrified will be locked inside one of them.
Lucas. Leah. My mother, maybe.
I hold tight to the railings as the suspended structure dips and sways under our weight, shuddering as the Wardens step onto it a few flights below. The way it twists and turns every fifteen feet ensures they can’t get a clean shot at us with the firing machines, so at least our skin is safe. For the moment.
The bad thing about this layout is that Pax and I are running to nowhere. Once we reach the top, we’ll find Lucas and Deshi, but we’ll be trapped with no way out. The thought leaves me hoping once again Cadi’s right about our power exploding once we’re all together.
Then I realize it doesn’t matter. The only way we’re getting out of here with Deshi is by traveling. The fire starts to build in my center, weakened a little from the display downstairs, and I’m about ready to the torch the staircase and turn our attackers into falling embers. Except at that moment, we hit another landing, another cage.
This one isn’t empty.
The sight of Cadi stops me, and Pax drags to a stop, huffing. The sound of pounding Warden boots echoes distantly in my ears, but for this moment, all I can do is stare. She’s a shell of the Spritan I met last autumn, even further gone than when I saw her last, in the Observatory Pod.
Her front is pressed against the ground, face turned toward the cage door, one arm reached out as though pleading for help. For mercy or food, I don’t know, but none of it was given. Midnight eyes open and staring, clothes torn away in pieces, Cadi is a picture of abject misery. Madness. It looks as though they’ve tortured her with the amorphous slugs, and chunks of skin have sloughed away, leaving white alabaster underneath.
It’s the pristine color of bone but shimmers like glass. It’s beautiful, and I wonder if Cadi’s true Spritan appearance is showing through now, while she’s unable to stop it. Either way, she doesn’t know us. Whatever made her Cadi is gone, but her ragged inhale and exhale says they’re still keeping her alive. Probably only so they can torture her more, so they can use her to make the three of us talk, or lure us here in the first place.
Still, I can’t reduce the stairs to ash now. Even if I light them from here down, there’s a good chance the fire would leap upward, too. Cadi would crash to her death along with the Wardens gaining on us. Come to think of it, there’s no guarantee Pax and I would be able to beat the flames in a race to the top, or that we’d have time to get to Deshi and travel before this whole staircase disintigrated.
“Can you lift us to the top?” I ask Pax, suddenly recalling he can do that.
He shakes his head. “Not right now. I lost a lot of energy downstairs, and it takes everything to haul us both.”
Zackej shouts an indecipherable command, shaking me out of my horror at the sight of Cadi’s Broken body. Pax and I start moving again in tandem, working as a team as we pull each other up the steps, taking turns aiming fire and swirling air down at our pursuers. It’s slowing them down, and buying us a few precious minutes, but it won’t stop them.
I keep waiting for Pamant to shake this place down, but the earthen rumbles never come. If I had time between finding more fire inside me and running straight upward forever, I might wonder why. As it is, I’m just going to count it as a lucky break.
My legs burn by the time we’re halfway up, and the cages are all full now. I barely glance inside them, not having time to stop and, honestly, not wanting to know if they contain more ruined bodies that used to be people I knew. My right calf, where the slug burned through my pants and skin, is numb and heavy—I can’t decide if that’s better or worse.
Pax’s face puffs red at my side, slick with sweat. We’re both peeling off layers of clothes as we run, impossibly hot in this stuffy cavern and totally spent from the physical exertion and the way we loosed our energy in the fight. We
gave Lucas some time, and I keep expecting to meet him and Deshi on the way down.
Every time we hit a new landing and step onto a new flight without them appearing, more nerves join the ones banging around in my stomach. A gabillion things could have gone wrong, not least of all that they’ve damaged Deshi beyond repair, too. It’s arrogant of the Prime to keep him here; I’ve always thought so. If they suspect we take after our parents as far as our power is concerned, they could remove the threat of us ever coming into our full abilities by killing one of us.
And they’ve had Deshi for months.
Suspicion niggles in the back of my mind, a little feather that tickles the inside of my ear. It’s been there, nagging, ever since I learned there’s something about Deshi no one can tell us, and the way Cadi phrased so carefully that it wouldn’t be easy for us to get him.
We’re running straight into a trap, is what it all adds up to, but one we had to enter in order to fully understand the obstacles in our path. If Deshi is dead, or eviscerated, we’ll have to change tactics. We can still help the humans try to figure out another way. If we get out of here.
The final landing, suspended over the center of the room, finally levels in front of us. The cage containing Deshi takes up almost the entire thing, made of black marble flecked with silver and white. He’s inside, lying on his belly the way Cadi was, except his eyes are closed. I think they open for a moment, taking a quick survey of the happenings outside his prison, but when I check again, they’re closed.
I must have imagined it. He would get up and help if he were capable.
Lucas’s back blocks my view of the front, and two frozen Wardens splay to one side, arms hanging off the edge and dripping water toward the floor as they thaw.
“Lucas. What’s taking so long?”
He spins around, palpable relief washing over his features. “I can’t get it open. There’s no handle, no lock. I tried freezing and breaking it, but it’s too strong.”
