I garnered more and more speed as I swished down the stairs. Gemma’s weight wasn’t an anchor weighing me down—it was pulling me forward, helping me acquire the speed I needed to pull farther and faster away from these flame streaks.
I kept my palms faced downward, letting the ice slide grow more and more as I neared the bottom floor. Gemma slept through it all, completely knocked out from the spelled sleeping tea I’d made her. I hadn’t realized it would be that strong.
The main door of my building lay in front of me. It would respond to my fingerprint as well, but if I stopped to scan it, all would be lost. The fire would overtake the both of us.
Instead, I flipped my palms upward, spraying it with my ice powers, freezing it solid. Then I straightened my legs, pulled Gemma behind me, and closed my eyes.
My feet slammed into the heavy door, shattering it into a thousand ice shards that didn’t fall until after we’d already passed the threshold. The fire was right behind us, but we had pulled away enough that it was still inside the building.
Still spinning on the ice slide, I turned around, facing my palms back toward the building.
Now I focused my bright blue energy on the hole where the door had been. I narrowed my eyes and set my jaw, forcing all my power into that one space until a solid, thick block of ice sat where the door used to be.
The fire streaks roared toward it, but it held.
It wouldn’t for long. That fire would melt through, and I would be lucky if I even got a reasonable head start out of my efforts.
But a head start to where was the question.
I stood, pulling a still-unconscious Gemma back into my arms. I had gathered quite the fan club as I sped down the street; people lined their windows to watch the spectacle.
I could only hope that the people inside of my building were able to get out. While it was true that the fire wasn’t looking for them directly, it still burned. And a burning building lit for someone else was every bit as deadly as one lit for nothing.
I took a hard left, realizing where my feet were taking me. It was the only place I could think to go, the only secretive spot I knew of.
I was heading toward the alley, toward the room Henrick had directed me to earlier, the place where I had been so thoroughly embarrassed. But they could think whatever they wanted of me—so long as they kept my sister safe from whatever this was.
I took another left, suddenly aware I wasn’t exactly sure how to get where I needed to go. All of these buildings looked the same, and I was still new here, not used to the back and forth of the circle.
Gemma’s weight was once again pulling at me.
Why did I have to give her that damn sleeping potion? Couldn’t I have just been as neglectful as she’d accused me of being before she broke down? Maybe then she’d be running beside me right now.
Cursing out loud, I saw I had inadvertently taken us down a dead-end alleyway. And not the right one. I scanned the area.
Behind us, a few of the fire streaks made the turn to meet us. They flew in the air like stars that had lost their way. Stars with fangs that wanted to kill us where we stood.
I turned again. There was no door, not even one I could freeze and break into. Turning the other way, I saw the same thing.
This was it.
Taking a deep breath, I held onto Gemma even tighter. Perhaps the sleeping potion wasn’t such a bad thing after all.
At least, that way, she would sleep through this. She wouldn’t have to feel it when it ended.
I wouldn’t be so lucky.
Bright blue energy crackled around me. It must have colored my eyes, too, because everything took on a blue tint. I had never felt power so strong inside of me, filling me up until it threatened to spill out.
But it wouldn’t be enough. I knew that much. All I could do was hope for a miracle.
That was when a miracle actually found us.
Silver strands of power began to circle us. I had no idea where it was coming from or even how it was coming to be, but it poured toward the fire, creating a webbed net of energy that captured the flames.
I swallowed hard, watching as one by one, the flames slowed to a stop, trapped by the glowing silver net.
“Run,” said a voice in the distance—a deep voice like rumbling gravel that pulled at me, deep in my soul.
“Run,” he repeated.
I wasn’t going to make him repeat himself a third time, but where could I go? I rushed toward the power net, and it stretched, making room for me as I rushed through it.
The fire, still burning, attempted to lunge at Gemma and me as we passed, but it couldn’t move, thank the regent.
A flicker of silver energy sparked in the darkness, barely illuminating a tall figure. I could see that it was a man, but nothing else. I turned right with Gemma still in my arms, the bright silver spark of that net magic pulling at my memory, reminding me of a story I heard in the weeks before coming to the circle.
My friends used to tell me how dangerous it was out here, how easily magic, foul play, or, on nights like tonight…both, could strike a person down.
But they also told me about something else. Or rather, someone else. A vigilante—a magic wielder who stood up against the horrors that lurked in the circle.
He was a light in the darkness. He was the Beacon. And his powers supposedly looked a lot like what I had just seen.
But there was no way that was true. If the Beacon did exist, then he certainly wouldn’t waste his time with people like my sister and me. I was no one important. I was brand new, a bottom rung in any ladder I would have wished to climb. And my sister had just gotten here.
The Beacon would have undoubtedly let me pass by, let me die if that was what fate had in store. His actions had purpose—real purpose. He wasn’t so much of a hero as he was someone who made sure things stayed in balance. And our deaths certainly weren’t going to disrupt any balances around here.
So why did it happen?
I shook my head, sweat pooling at my forehead. Gemma was growing heavier in my arms—or it felt that way now the adrenaline was wearing off. Luckily, I hadn’t seen any more of the flames, and I was reasonably sure I was on the right path.
I’d be in Henrick’s lair, or whatever it was, within minutes.
He was crazy for sure, intent on believing conspiracy theories that even a youngling would know better than to give credence to, but maybe that was what I needed. Maybe his fringe brand of loyalty and off-kilter way of thinking could keep my sister and me safe.
No matter. It was all I had. Unless that man back there was the Beacon and he was about to swoop back down and offer my sister and me safe lodging, a change of clothes, and a couple of hot meals for the next few weeks, my options were down to exactly one.
Never one to turn down the only path presenting itself to me, I pushed through the pain in my lower back and the burning in my forearms. The room I’d been prisoner in less than twenty-four hours ago was the only thought in my mind.
I had no way of knowing whether he would be there, but I didn’t know where the man actually lived. Besides, he obviously had a little sect of people who believed the same crazy nonsense he did. If he wasn’t around, one of them might help us.
I took another right. This time, I was fairly certain I was on the right track. The room was down here. I was almost there.
My run had slowed to something slightly faster than a jog by the time I saw the door at the end of the alley. Just as I sighed in relief, I heard something above me.
When I looked up, a twirling device—something like a small airborne drone—spun overhead. A pencil-thin red light jutted from its front and landed on me.
“Stop where you are,” it said in an eerily human voice. “You are found to be in violation of numerous sector laws, one of which is being present on circle streets after your designated curfew time. As a result, you are to be apprehended.”
I had never heard that last word before.
“Appreh
ended?” I asked, narrowing my eyes and focusing on the red light. “What does apprehended me—”
A stinging sensation started in my chest and spread across the entirety of my body. I started to shake. My arms went numb, and then limp.
Gemma fell from my grasp and landed on the pavement with a thud, still unconscious as I landed alongside her.
“G-Gemma?” I said in a low and shaky voice. “It’ll be okay,” I stammered, reaching out for her hand.
The world went dark before I could take it, and the last thing I heard were my own words ringing hollow against my ears—It’ll be okay—and the lingering doubt that it simply just wouldn’t.
Chapter 9
My head spun aimlessly as I drifted in and out of consciousness.
My body ached. My heart felt heavy and empty all at once. The sickness in my stomach was somehow worse than all the rest of it combined, and it took a while for me to remember what happened.
The first time my eyes fluttered open, they were met with a bright, blinding light that seared against my pupils, nearly forcing me to close them again. But I didn’t. Something told me the moment I closed my eyes that I wouldn’t be able to open them again. They would grow too heavy, too cumbersome.
I didn’t need that right now. I needed to keep my wits about me, if at all possible. I needed to figure out where I was and what was happening to me.
To me…and to my sister.
That information slammed into my brain, jolting me into a fully alert state.
Gemma!
The thought of what might be happening to her stuck into my heart like a spear. Someone had her. Something had taken the both of us, and if I didn’t fight this horrid weakness that now spread throughout the entirety of my body, I’d lose her just the same as I’d lost Mother and Father.
I couldn’t handle that. I couldn’t afford to lose anything else, not when I had so very little left of myself.
I attempted to lift my hands and muster up some of that bright blue energy I had used more in my few days in the circle than I ever had during my entire childhood in the Dustlands, but I found my body wasn’t responding to my demands.
My limbs—all of them—were pinned to something cold and hard. They refused to comply when I commanded them to flop about, to even move an inch.
Don’t close your eyes.
I had to fight to hold on, to maintain that one last control—my consciousness—before I lost that, too. Because if I fell asleep, I would be useless as my sister was subjected to who knew what kind of horror that came along with being strapped down in strange, unknown places.
I ground my teeth together, angry with myself and hoping the emotion could fuel some energy to get me out of this. The need to find my sister and get her out of here was overwhelming.
I hadn’t even had Gemma an entire night, and I had already lost her.
I must have been out of my head to think I had the slightest chance of being able to raise her properly. I wasn’t my mother. I wasn’t anybody’s mother, regardless of how much Gemma might have needed me to be right now.
And now my sister was going to pay the price for that.
In that moment, I didn’t even care that whatever torment awaited Gemma would also be visited upon me. I could handle it. I had faced a ravager. I had stared down the biggest bullies the Dustlands had to offer, and I had lived almost an entire week in the circle.
They couldn’t scare me—not with threats to my own personal well-being. If this killed me, then it killed me. But I was only okay with that if I could spare Gemma, which meant I needed to survive long enough to rescue her.
First things first, I needed to get off this damn slab. I needed to compel my body to move, force my legs to kick and my arms to punch.
My eyes burned now, aching to shut themselves if only for a second, but I denied them that release, staring directly into the bright light until it blurred into a dark blue-and-black sunspot staining my vision.
And then a figure—a person—sauntered right into view.
My sight was compromised just then, but it wouldn’t have mattered. This person was wearing a surgical mask. It almost covered their entire face. The rounded-metal mouth covering that all medics used when cutting into someone was all I could see.
Shit.
My body jolted at the thought they might take a knife to me. Why would they be cutting into me? I wasn’t sick, and I wasn’t hurt. Unless…
Unless that drone shot me? Or did one of the flames get me after all? Maybe I was scorched and hurt. Maybe I was half a person and as close to death as my parents had been back at the farm that night. Maybe Gemma was watching it all happen again from a viewing dock above me.
I tried to move my lips, to speak and let this person know I was both alive and awake…but my mouth, like the rest of my body, refused to cooperate.
The surgeon settled over me. He reached overhead, right out of my line of sight, and pulled something forward.
It blocked the bright light above and mercifully gave my eyes a much-needed break.
A loud noise—like one of thrashers back home deconstructing a line of crops—ground out a series of clicks from above as the surgeon flicked a switch on the strange device.
The surgeon said something, presumably to someone on the other side of the room, but the machine was so loud I couldn’t make out the words.
He moved the device closer, and, with it, his own face. As he neared me, the clicking noise grew so loud I was sure it would draw blood from my ears. But now I could see him—more of him, anyway.
Though most of his face was covered, his dark green eyes, stormy like the sea, and dark eyebrows were laid bare before me. Or at least, it was how I imagined the sea might look.
The closest I had ever come—the closest I would ever come—to the sea was the sector-approved lake that sat on the far side of our farm back home. The one that existed solely to breed fish to feed the denizens of the Dustlands.
The surgeon’s eyebrows were unspectacular, aside from a long scar that ran through the right one, creating a ragged break in the line of it. His face contracted as he saw me, his oceanic eyes narrowing.
“S-she’s awake,” he said, pulling back and sounding unsure. He left the device close enough to me that I couldn’t hear a thing as he spoke to the person on the other side of the room. All I heard was the loud and thrashing rumbling of the machine. But, judging from the way he looked and moved, something about me being conscious had upset him.
He threw his hands up, shaking his head firmly in response to something I couldn’t hear. He did that twice more before his movements finally started to slow.
I didn’t need to be able to hear it to know what this was about. I had seen it anytime Father had argued with Mother about anything. Regardless of whether he was right or wrong, it always went the same way. He started out with righteous indignation. Piss and vinegar, as he used to say, was a common phrase in the old days. Then, slowly—or sometimes quickly, depending on how determined she was—Mother would wear him down.
His arms would fall to his sides the way the surgeons were now. And his responses would come slower and less intense—another similarity with what was happening before my very eyes.
When the surgeon’s gaze met mine again, I saw something in them that I didn’t expect to.
Regret.
The emotion peppered the waves of his sea-green eyes, layered with a solemn consignment. I knew right then that whatever he was about to do to me didn’t sit well with him. But he was going to do it nonetheless.
He leaned down, meeting the machine, and, with it, my face.
“Forgive me,” he whispered in a voice that was low and somehow familiar.
And then he pressed the noisy and grinding machine to my forehead.
The intensity of it was unlike anything I had ever felt before. The ravager hadn’t come close. The flying streaks of flame hadn’t come close. Even my powers when they emerged back home and sent me reeling to the floor of m
y bedroom in the dead of night hadn’t come close.
This thing, whatever it was, poured itself into every pore of my body. It ripped through me, rearranged me, and shoved me back together in a way that I shouldn’t have been.
Finally, like some sick and cruel joke, my body shocked itself back to life.
I could move, not that it would help me.
The buzzing of the machine rang through me, sending me into wild and erratic spasms and locking up my jaw. The world spun. Pain spiraled in and out of me with enough frequency that I couldn’t tell where it stopped and where I started.
In that moment, when the machine was doing its worst, I wanted to die. There was nothing but pain. There was nothing—no sound, no sight, no thought. My existence was pain. I was the pain, and it was me.
When the pain slowed, then stopped altogether, I hated myself for every moment I’d wished to die while it’d been happening. Gemma needed me. Mother was dead. Father was dead. She was in a place she didn’t know, a place she had intentionally not paid any attention to. I was the one who had brought her here, and now I was on the verge of death.
What would she do then? I couldn’t succumb to the pain.
The machine ground to a halt, silencing itself as the surgeon pulled it away from my head.
Finally, I allowed myself to blink. I had control of my eyes now, control of the rest of my body. I pulled up, but a pair of hands I didn’t see jerked me back against the slab I had been lying on and pinned me down.
“Stay still,” a woman’s voice said from behind me.
The tone of it, as cold and calculating as any I had ever heard, sent shivers down my sore and worn spine.
“No,” I said through gritted teeth. My voice was hoarse and tired, my throat sore and nearly closed. The words barely squeaked out as I made my empty threat. “Where’s…my…sister?”
A jolt of something like electricity rushed through me, locking up my joints and pulling a scream from my lips. The surgeon jerked back around, looking at me and then at the woman holding me down.
“Was that really necessary? She can barely move, for regent’s sake.”
Under: an Adult Dystopian Paranormal Romance: Sector 5 (The Othala Witch Collection) Page 7
