Falling Stars: The Last Sanctuary Book Two

by Kyla Stone

  For a moment, Harmony said nothing. She couldn’t. Her guilt was written all over her face. Her lower lip trembled. “I’m a good person.”

  Micah shook his head wearily. She was a good person, until she became desperate enough to cross that line. Everyone was desperate now, or else they soon would be. What would happen then? How many good people would resort to the most repugnant of acts?

  Anyone could commit horrific crimes if they were desperate enough, if they felt justified in their desperation. Harmony had. Where was the line between doing what you must to protect those you love and yet still hold onto your soul, your humanity?

  He didn’t know. He didn’t have all the answers. Be good. Be brave. There was a line. Maybe the key was never forgetting it was there. Maybe you had to make an intentional decision to stay true to yourself despite the harshness and cruelty surrounding you. If you didn’t, you were one terrible decision away from becoming what you’d once loathed. If you were no different than the enemy, what was the point?

  Amelia swayed on her feet. She looked far too pale. Before Micah could say anything, she waved him off, leaning against the doorframe to steady herself. “What is the Sanctuary?”

  Harmony scrubbed her face with the palm of her hand and took a breath. “They’ve been building something up in the hills for years, preparing for something like this. They say it’s a government-operated safe zone, like Raven Rock and Cheyenne Mountain and all the rest, only above ground. It’s restricted to essential personnel, important officials and their families, and the richies who can buy their way in. But they have everything—power, communications, working utilities, research facilities, a hospital. Rumor is that’s where they moved President Sloane and the surviving Unity Council members after Mount Weather fell.”

  Silas and Amelia exchange startled glances. Amelia grabbed Silas’s hand and squeezed. Micah frowned, puzzled by their reaction. Had they heard of this Sanctuary place before?

  “Why didn’t you say something before?” Amelia asked.

  Harmony stiffened. “You didn’t ask. And it didn’t seem important. What the government does in other parts doesn’t matter here.”

  “Unless they find a cure—then it matters!” Amelia’s face reddened, her hands balling into fists. She was usually in such control of her emotions, hardly letting her fear or anger show. But her mother was kidnapped, and Amelia nearly taken with her. She was upset, worried, and angry, but she still held her own. She was stronger than anyone Micah knew, other than his mom. “Is that where they’re taking my mother?”

  “I have no idea. I only know a bunch of them go every month to trade for their antivirals. They might try to sell Elise as a servant, a cook, or . . . something else.”

  Micah’s stomach knotted at the woman’s words, but Amelia didn’t seem to register their meaning. She crossed her arms, her expression hardening. “Then that’s where we go.”

  “We should try to track them down now, tonight,” Silas said, “before they get too far.”

  “We don’t know where their compound is. We’ll be vastly outnumbered,” Micah cautioned. He didn’t want to risk anyone else. Not now, not even for Amelia’s mother. “We need to be smart.”

  “That’s why we have to go to the Sanctuary,” Amelia insisted.

  Micah stepped closer, careful not to touch Amelia, but hoping his presence would bring her a little comfort, at least. “Where is this Sanctuary?”

  Harmony rubbed her eyes, her face lined with fatigue. “I’m not certain, exactly. I’ve never been there.”

  “Take a guess,” Silas snapped.

  “Please.” Micah kept his voice even. “Try your best to be more helpful.”

  She refused to meet Micah’s eyes. Her gaze drifted toward the shelves of sugar and flour beside her. “It’s past Dahlonega, nestled at the base of the Blue Ridge Mountains, back there in the middle of nowhere.”

  Micah guesstimated it was around a hundred and fifty miles north. “We’ll have to go through Atlanta.”

  “No one goes into the cities willingly, certainly not Atlanta. And not unless you’re a Pyro. No one messes with them. No one. They make the Headhunters look like kittens. Add in the millions of diseased bodies, infected rats and dogs, the fires—Atlanta is burning. It’s a death wish.”

  A chill ran down his spine. “What route do the Headhunters use?”

  “They take the back roads around the greater Atlanta suburbs. It’s four times as long, but your odds of survival are a hell of a lot better. I wouldn’t attempt the city if I were you.” She winced, as if thinking of something painful. “It’s no place for a little boy.”

  Silas frowned. “We need to get there before the Headhunters if we’re going to get Mother back. Our best bet is to surprise them and force them to reveal where she is.”

  “Then we cut through the city,” Amelia said without hesitation.

  “Amelia—”

  “We’re going!” She clutched her charm bracelet through her shirt. Her knuckles were white.

  He knew she wouldn’t budge, just as he knew he would give in despite his misgivings. “Okay,” he said with a sigh. “I’ll tell Jericho.”

  Amelia turned to Harmony. She lifted her chin, her eyes going hard. “And we’re taking two of your trucks.”

  Silas gestured at Harmony with the muzzle of his gun. “What are we doing with her?”

  “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.” One of the only Bible verses he remembered, and only because his mom hung a cheap digital art canvas over the towel rack, so he could always work on becoming a better person—even in the bathroom.

  Silas’s expression turned even more sour. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “Leave her,” Micah said. “She’s no danger to us now. And we need to bury Nadira.”

  “Of course.” Amelia’s eyes softened. “Silas and I will help.”

  As Micah turned to follow the others out, Harmony seized his shirt sleeve.

  “I am truly sorry about Nadira and Elise.” Her voice was tinged with genuine sorrow. Her eyes glistened. In the overhead light, her face sagged, her sallow skin creased with age and grief. “Please forgive me.”

  He’d argued to spare her life, to grant her mercy. But forgiveness was too great a request, even for him. He turned his back and walked out, leaving her alone with her tears.

  38

  Willow

  Willow sat on the ground, leaning against the wall of the residence hall. Her backpack lay beside her. She’d showered and dressed in the fresh clothes Anna gave her. She had to roll up the cargo pant legs so the ends wouldn’t drag, but it worked well enough.

  The moon shone, round and full, spilling pale white light over the hunched buildings of the Sweet Creek compound. The stars glittered like shards of ice. An owl hooted somewhere nearby.

  Benjie is safe. She kept repeating it in her head, over and over. Celeste had saved him from that dog when she’d thrown the brick at it in a startlingly brave and selfless act. Willow thanked her profusely. They’d exchanged genuine smiles for the first time since they met on the Grand Voyager, both soaked to the skin and terrified as they huddled beneath that bridge.

  She shivered in the cold night air. She wore a sweater and wrapped an auto-warming blanket around her shoulders, but she couldn’t seem to get warm.

  She’d managed to hold it together until now. After the chaos of the dogs and the fighting, she’d wanted to get as far away from the Headhunter’s body as she could. She stumbled across the battered, bloodied ground to the tree line and bent double, vomiting up the contents of her stomach.

  When she straightened, still sick and trembling, she caught sight of the girl and the wolf hovering on the edge of the clearing, as if undecided whether to stay or go. She walked toward them on shaky legs, half-expecting them to flee. But they didn’t. “What’s your name?” she asked.

  The girl still held an old hoverboard beneath her arm. Her eyes roamed over Willow’s face, dark and cal
culating. “Raven.” She jabbed a thumb at her own chest. She pointed at the wolf sitting calmly on his haunches beside her, his ears pricked, blood matting his forelegs and muzzle. “Shadow.”

  “Thank you for saving me, for helping us.”

  She shrugged. “You needed it.”

  “Are you alone? Where are your parents?”

  She merely shrugged again, her gaze hardening. “Dead.” She looked a little younger than Willow, too young to be alone in the woods. Willow glanced at the wolf again. He was disconcertingly still, a breeze softly rippling his thick fur.

  “Did you—did Shadow come from a wildlife refuge? A girl here told me there’s one a few miles away.”

  Raven’s eyes darted past Willow to the compound. She took a step backward and activated her hover board. The wolf rose soundlessly to his feet. “We have to go.”

  She wanted to ask more questions, but Raven seemed both simultaneously fearless and skittish. “You can come with us,” Willow said in a rush, startled at her own forwardness. Jericho and Silas wouldn’t be keen, but she didn’t care.

  Raven only pulled her hood back up, shielding her face, and jumped on her board. She whistled to Shadow. Before Willow could say or do anything, the girl disappeared through the trees, hovering a foot off the ground as she skimmed over leaves, roots, and low underbrush, easily maneuvering around trees and bushes, the wolf loping beside her like a silent shadow.

  They’d gone as mysteriously as they’d come.

  And now she was here, slumped against the residence hall in the middle of the night, waiting to flee to some new promise of shelter and safety. But appearances were deceiving, and sometimes promises turned out to be false as fool’s gold.

  She knew that better than anyone.

  The cold of the ground seeped through her pants. She felt cold all the way to her bones. A weariness like she’d never felt descended over her. Her body ached. Her eyes burned. Her legs felt like they couldn’t carry her weight any longer.

  Her hands wouldn’t stop shaking. She kept scrubbing her palms against her pants, trying to get all the blood off. But it was still there. She couldn’t see it, but she felt it there, staining her skin, seeping into her cells.

  She took a life. She knew in her head that it was necessary. She would do it again to protect Benjie and everyone else she cared for. But her heart—her soul—was a different story. Something deep inside her recoiled, repulsed at the thing she’d done.

  She kept replaying the scene in her mind, over and over, the softness of his belly, how easily the knife slid through human flesh, the stunned look in his eyes as he collapsed, shocked that he wasn’t exempt from death after all.

  Like so many rites of passages in life, there was a ‘before’ and an ‘after’ now. She had killed. She was a killer. The word left a bitter taste on her tongue. What did that make her? Had she changed, even in ways she couldn’t see? Did she want to change?

  Silas exited the residence hall, caught sight of her, and strolled over, the nail-spiked baseball bat swinging at his side. His face was a shadow in the dim moonlight. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t know if she could.

  He squatted on his haunches, forearms resting on his thighs. He stared at her for a long moment, his gaze drifting down to her trembling hands. “It doesn’t last forever.”

  She didn’t need to ask him what he meant. She knew. She remembered how she and Benjie were trapped in the bowels of the ship with a semi-automatic pointed at them. Silas had rounded the corner and shot the terrorist, saving their lives. She remembered how afterward, he’d been pale and shaken. It must’ve been his first kill.

  He stood up and held out the bat, handle first. “We have a little time left.”

  She almost forced a smile, then realized she didn’t have to. The one thing you never needed to be with Silas was fake. He simply didn’t care. Tonight, that was exactly what she needed.

  “You still have that thing?” she managed.

  His teeth glimmered. “You could say I’ve taken a shine to it. You coming?”

  She pulled herself to her feet. She curled her fingers into fists, then opened them again. The blood wasn’t visible, but it was there. It always would be.

  She took the bat. “Let’s go, then.”

  39

  Gabriel

  Gabriel slammed the shovel into the hard-packed earth. His hands were blistered, but he did not stop. His eyes stung, but he did not weep. He dug shovelful after shovelful, until the pit beneath the great spreading oak tree was deep and wide enough for its purpose.

  Micah, Willow, and Amelia came to help. He sent them away with a litany of furious curses. Micah hesitated. “I saw what you did. You helped us. You saved Amelia.”

  “I couldn’t save her,” he said, his voice raw.

  Micah nodded, his face contorting with conflicting emotions—sorrow, pity, and guilt. “I know. I’m sorry.”

  Only Micah stayed, standing guard a dozen yards away on the edge of the tree line. When Jericho came a few minutes later with handcuffs, Micah sent him away. “Let him be,” Micah said. So Jericho did.

  They left him alone with the body, the shovel in his hands, and the grave. The trees stood silent and still as sentinels all around him, their black shadows gnarled and twisting. The moonlight filtered through the branches above him, casting the world in a ghostly gloom. A mournful howl rose somewhere in the distance.

  He lifted her body and placed her gently down into the earth. Inside the pit, he squatted beside her. He carefully wrapped the headscarf over her hair and smoothed the stray tendrils off her face. He crossed her arms over her chest and closed her dull, staring eyes with the pad of his thumb.

  He had no faith and no words worth speaking.

  He shoveled the dirt over her with great care, covering her face last. He dug until his blisters burst. His biceps burned. His heart beat inside his chest and refused to quit.

  When he finished, he stood at her grave and didn’t know what to do. His soul was black, and his heart was a hollow thing. He’d believed death would be his justice, and in a just death, he would find his peace.

  Now, he knew he would have neither. This girl had died for him. He had not wanted it or asked for it. He had not deserved it. But she did it anyway. She was kind and good and innocent and he was none of those things. It made no sense to him.

  He stood facing the darkness. It called to him, tugging at the dark inside his own soul. He was prepared to go. He was ready. He longed for it.

  The mournful howl came again, much closer now. He peered into the darkness of the woods.

  A pair of yellow eyes stared back at him. The shadows shifted, and he saw the great black wolf poised between two pine trees. The broad shoulders and chest rippled with muscles beneath its thick fur. The wolf raised his regal head, his muzzle long and narrow, his gaze intelligent, cunning.

  He clutched the shovel handle, ignoring the sting of his blisters. Then he relaxed his fingers. He dropped the shovel to the ground with a dull thud. If the wolf came for him, so be it. He wouldn’t fight his fate.

  The wolf didn’t attack.

  “Come on!”

  The wolf merely watched him with those yellow eyes.

  “What are you waiting for!”

  The wolf didn’t move.

  Gabriel didn’t move. Earn your redemption, she said. He did not deserve it. But she did.

  For the first time in a long time, Gabriel thought of his mother. It was Micah who’d been closest with their mother, Micah who took her faith and admonitions to heart.

  Gabriel was more like their father—a knot of helpless grief and anger. But now Gabriel would give anything to talk to her again, to feel the warm security of her hug, to hear one last time the words always in her heart—do the right thing, my son. What would she think of what he’d become?

  He’d lost his way. But maybe he could find it again.

  He wouldn’t run. He wouldn’t die. He couldn’t, not after what Nadira did for him
. Death was the easy way out, wasn’t it? It was so much harder to live with your sins. So much harder to stay, to atone, to earn what grace another had given, and at so great a cost.

  He looked at the wolf again, meeting those yellow eyes that seemed to pierce his soul. After a long moment, the creature melted back into the trees, a shadow indistinguishable among shadows.

  Gabriel picked up a handful of dirt and crumbled it between his fingers over Nadira’s grave. He would stay. If there was such a thing as redemption—if it existed for someone like him—then he would find it. He had to. He would do everything in his power to earn it.

  He would earn it for Nadira and the little girl in yellow.

  He would earn it for Micah. His brother, his everything. It was his mother’s last wish for Gabriel to take care of Micah, for her boys to be good and brave together. The world had fallen to pieces, but he wouldn’t lose his brother, too. He would fight for Micah.

  He would earn it for Amelia. She couldn’t love him again; he knew that. He had no misconceptions, no false hopes. He’d betrayed her, nearly destroyed her. Nothing he could ever do would make him worthy of her love. But maybe, someday, she could forgive him.

  He glanced through the trees to the dark shape of his brother at the edge of the clearing. Micah still waited for him. It was something.

  It was a beginning.

  40

  Amelia

  Amelia stared up at the bowl of the night sky. She’d spent the last five hours lying on the back of the open truck bed, exhausted but sleepless. Too many anxious thoughts and endless questions hummed in her mind.

  Silas drove, with Finn sitting shotgun. Amelia shared the back with Willow, Micah, and Benjie and a half-dozen blankets. Willow sat facing the way they’d come, a rifle on her lap as she guarded the rear. Benjie curled up like a kitten against her side. Jericho, Horne, and Celeste rode in the other truck, with Gabriel in handcuffs in the back.