“So, they were using each other,” Sean says.
“That’s what The Fury does best,” Milo says. “Except that the Mastermind was thinking of ways that he could control the Curas more effectively. He began letting Chad in on less and less and limited him to what Chad originally wanted—to find the Key that could read Walter Fisher’s Memory so that the Fury could hide the information forever and prevent the Ianua from ever stopping them.”
I feel like we’re all being very careful not to even clear our throats. Milo, still sniffling, keeps going.
“The Mastermind believed the 13th Cura had the Key and Chad agreed. He thought Garrett’s little sister had the Vision. I was supposed to find out, but you guys know I never asked you. I still don’t know if she does or not, and I don’t want to know. I couldn’t do it and I’m already dead if the Mastermind finds out I didn’t do my part and…you know.”
“Shank me?” the Addo asks, but he glances around at Sean, Garrett and I with his brows raised. I’m not sure if he’s surprised or if he just wants to know if he used ‘shank’ correctly.
“Yes.” Milo says, answering all of it. “But I didn’t. I won’t.”
“Alrighty then,” the Addo steps away and Garrett steps between Milo and the Addos. I stand behind Milo, ready to pounce. The Addo drifts over to a bench and sits down on it. “Tell me, why didn’t you do it, Milo? You had your chance. Why not do what you’ve been raised to do?”
“Kill an Addo? I haven’t been raised to fight.” Milo says, but he drops his eyes as the Addo wiggles his brows at him. Milo continues, but he sounds half pleading and half like he’s going to be sick. “I was going to do it, because Chad promised me that I would be free then. You have to believe me, I don’t want anything to do with any of this. Chad said he and the Mastermind would let me walk away from the Ianua and the Fury, I could be Simple, if I just did this one thing. Otherwise, they’d come after me. They’d never stop. Not until they’d killed me. But when I came here, I realized I’ll never be free anyway. If I kill you or if I’m being hunted, either way, I’m stuck.”
“Smart boy,” the Addo says. He scooches back on his couch cushion, pulling a sandaled foot onto his knee. He twirls a stray thread that hangs off the side of his sock. “But instead of walking away and always looking over your shoulder, why not just join us?”
Milo doesn’t even blink. It takes him a few seconds to swallow before he answers.
“The Curas don’t want me. They know what my parents have done. They believe I’ll do something, well, something exactly like what Chad and the Mastermind want me to.”
“What if I said that we want you?” Addo asks. “Our Cura.”
“How do you know you can trust me?”
“Funny question,” Addo pulls the thread from his sock. “How do you know you can trust us?”
“Because you always do what’s right,” Milo says without hesitation. “That’s what the Ianua is. People who want to do the right thing.”
“And here you are,” Addo says, motioning to Milo’s spot on the ground. “Doing the right thing. I think it’s as good a reason as any. You’ll get used to telling the truth after a while. It becomes, I don’t know…easy. Unless you can’t see yourself being easy.”
“I think I could,” Milo says.
“Don’t just think it, know it.”
“I could,” Milo says in a tone that even makes me feel like it’s possible to just decide on a different direction and go that way.
“Well then, that’s settled.” Addo says, standing up and rubbing his hands together. “Now I need a word with Nalena, Garrett and Sean. Would you excuse us a moment? Oh, and take those two hooligans with you.”
Addo motions to Iris and Zaneen, who have come through my apartment door into the Courtyard. Zaneen’s eyebrows perk up, but Iris digs her fingers into Mr. Boodles’ fur.
“Are you sure, Addo?” Garrett asks. Sean looks just as worried.
“Trust me, boys,” Addo says and both Garrett and Sean nod, although they hawk-eye Milo as he leads the way back to his apartment off the Courtyard. Iris holds Zaneen’s hand, but watches her brothers over her shoulder until Addo scoots her away with a reassuring whisk of his fingers.
“Are you really sure about him, Addo?” Sean asks once they’re gone.
“Some things,” Addo says with a wink to Garrett’s older brother. “You just know, when you’re an Addo.”
Once Milo’s door is closed, the Addo turns to me.
“So Chad’s toast,” the Addo says. I nod.
“I couldn’t have done it without my father,” I say. “He knew where Chad’s weakest Cavis was.”
“Glad to see you came through, Roger,” Addo says without looking at any of us. “Keep her field up until the storm’s passed, won’t you?”
“Me?” I say and at the same time that I hear Roger’s voice reassure me that he’ll do it, the Addo shushes me and says, “Him. Your father. He’s going to keep your field open so you don’t pass out on us.” Addo changes course. “So, how about the Memory, Nalena? Did you get a peek at it?”
I nod, removing the paper from my pocket. “It was only one word. It said reset.”
“That was it?” the Addo winces. He takes the paper from me, sighs over it. “I won’t be blessing this just yet. We’ll burn it first, so the knowledge is scattered from The Fury. But are you sure there was nothing else?”
“That was it,” I say. “What does it mean?”
“Well, kids, it means we got an answer we didn’t want. It means The Fury is too far gone to be turned around. Walter’s solution is to go nuclear.”
Addo leans back on the bench with an uncomforting groan. Sean steeples his fingers, pressing them to his lips.
“Nuclear,” I say. It’s a question without being one. I’m afraid of the answer.
“Walter wanted his meaning to be very clear, and God bless him, it is,” Addo says. “The message is that there are no solutions. The Fury is gaining on us, kids, and it looks like we’ve underestimated them. When the energies become so incredibly out of whack that the Veritas can’t balance them, then the Core of the Earth has to be reset. The bigger picture is that the whole world essentially starts over. It’s a charming system, really.”
“You don’t mean starting over like actually starting over though,” I say.
“It sounds like that’s not what you mean,” Addo chuckles. “But it’s exactly what I mean.”
“But that only happens as a last resort,” Sean says.
“And here we are,” Addo motions to the Courtyard. “The next round of dinosaurs, sealed up for the last time, in our resort. We are sealed up, aren’t we, Garrett?”
“Everything but the roof,” Garrett’s voice is thin. “Freddie told me to keep it open unless The Fury commandeered a chopper.”
“Huh.” The Addo nods thoughtfully. “What are the odds of that?”
“Nalena and I will go up and take a look around, just to be sure.” Garrett says and the Addo adds, “Good idea. It looks like you could both use some air and Sean and I will see to having a little bonfire down here.”
“No one can come in off the roof without the code,” Garrett says as we climb the steps to the door. “Freddie’s design was brilliant.”
I know he’s trying to think of other things. I know he really can’t. Not with his mom and all our friends off confronting the other twelve Curas, not with his two little brothers trying to collapse Fury-filled tunnels beneath us. Not with us stuck, helpless to help anyone that’s outside the walls of this brilliant last resort.
I can’t really grasp it all, except that there’s fear clinging in the air and I can’t shake it. As I really work myself into a panic, Garrett opens the door to the roof. After a careful look around, we step into the sunshine.
From the top of the Hotel Celare, it seems impossible that my world feels so dark. All I can see is blue sky and cotton ball clouds and an occasional, swooping bird. Then we walk to the edge of the roof.
; The minute I look down over the edge, it’s like falling into the same world I feel in my gut.
I can see for miles, the grid of shops and buildings and blurry subdivisions. But it’s not the way I expect to see it, with cars stopping and starting at streetlights and people walking down sidewalks. Usually, everything sticks to its place in the grid.
But that’s not what’s happening now.
Instead, there is a swarm of people below, moving over the streets, lobbing things through store windows and pulling people from cars. A truck drives up over the sidewalk and through a store front window. The swarm moves, growing larger as it goes, angrier with every person it engulfs.
“It’s a riot,” I whisper.
“And we can’t help them,” Garrett whispers back. We stand close to one another and when the swarm advances down the street toward the hotel, Garrett reaches for my hand.
“Can you feel it inside you?” I ask him. “My heart’s pounding, like I’ve got to do something. I can’t stand it. What can we do?”
“Nothing,” Garrett says. “We are here to protect our Addos. That’s our priority.”
The swarm is larger than the street. It squeezes between buildings like an ooze, toward the hotel entrance. Looking straight down, I feel like I’m falling on top of them all.
I focus and see men and women climbing on each other, standing on each other, beating at the door and windows. The glass flexes under their fists, but the windows don’t break.
“They’re trying to get in.” My voice is duller than I expect it to be. I feel dizzy watching the people down below, especially when they catch sight of us and start to point and scream. Garrett moves even closer to me and I don’t move away.
“We’re stronger together,” he says. His touch makes my nerves lie down flat, but my heart races.
The ooze below parts like a polluted river. A Mack truck makes it’s way down the middle, gaining speed and running over whoever gets in the way before it slams into the side of the building. I move closer to Garrett, pressing myself against him. The impact of the truck sends shivers up the hotel walls.
“They can’t get in,” I say. Garrett’s arms circle closer around me as we watch another truck speed toward the building.
“No, they won’t,” he says softly, but when he tilts his head, I look up at him and his lips find mine. My legs shake and it’s hard to tell if it is the impact of the vehicles ramming the Hotel walls or the impact of this moment, as my innocence collapses. I realize in Garrett’s kiss that the Fury might actually get in, that my death may be the only service I can ever offer the Ianua and that finding all the keys still doesn’t make us safe.
We look out beyond the ledge of the building as the dark swarm continues to grow. The streets fill with broken glass and screaming people. The shock waves of the cars and trucks that The Fury use to ram into the hotel keep rippling up the wall.
“Look!” Garrett raises a finger into the distance. I focus in the direction he’s pointing and I see cars and trucks advancing on the edge of the swarm. The cars and trucks are old models, the kind I’ve come to know, kept up and handed down in the community to it’s young Contego. And hundreds of them are heading toward the hotel.
“They’re coming!” I laugh as I say it. The energy builds inside us, bouncing from Garrett to me and back again. It’s our Cura, coming from all directions. But it can’t be just our Cura alone. There are too many vehicles for that. I feel like my body will fire up into the sky and explode.
The classic cars and trucks shore up the edges of the mob below. Then, the vehicle doors open and our Contego stream out, on foot. We watch as our warriors advance through the crowd, creating a ring of collapsed Fury bodies that grows thicker as they work their way in toward the hotel.
“Mrs. Neho is going to have her hands full doing all those rings!” I say and Garrett laughs wildly. He squeezes me and his lips brush the nape of my neck. I feel his citrus breath dance beneath my ear.
“I love you, Nalena,” he murmurs and when I turn to look into his liquid blue eyes, everything in the world aligns. It’s as if every moment in my life was meant to lead to this one second that I’m in his arms, knowing that this is the way I want my life to feel forever. I’ve never been more alive than I am right now.
“I am your Vieo, Garrett,” I say. “And now I want you to be mine.”
Special Thanks
MOST OF ALL, TO MY Poley, Stick & Pook, who put up with everything it takes to do this. More than anything. And even more than that.
Extra thanks to Mom who lets me talk until I’ve figured out the story and who campaigns even harder than I do to have these books read. You’re where I get it from.
Thanks to Debbie, Cait and Patti ~ World’s Greatest First Readers, I’ll tell ya.
Thanks to Mike, Computer and Word Guru. Thanks for explaining it all.
Thanks to Streetlight Graphics for the awesome cover and formatting.
Thanks to all the awesome bloggers and tweeters who have read and recommended my work to their readers and friends. I am deeply grateful for your support.
And especially thanks to every reader who has picked up my story and took the time from anything else they could’ve been doing…to read. You are my gift and I hope my work will bring you joy.
Table of Contents
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Special Thanks
Cornerstone 02 - Keystone Page 30
