by Skye Malone
For a moment, he said nothing.
“Okay,” he agreed tightly.
I trembled.
His voice was cold when he continued. “The warehouse outside the Borman Grain plant, fifteen miles south of Midfield on Prairieview Road. I assume that Eleanor girl is still with you. Ask her if you need further directions.”
He hung up.
I lowered the phone.
“Chloe, what the hell–”
I tensed, and Noah cut off.
Still shaking, I drew a breath. I knew it wasn’t perfect. There wasn’t any guarantee that they wouldn’t call Harman, that he wouldn’t move Zeke. And in any case, we weren’t exactly an army. Even if Zeke was there, we couldn’t just storm the place.
But it was the best I could do.
“You know where Borman Grain is?” I asked Ellie.
She stared at me.
“Ellie?” I demanded.
Worriedly, she looked to the others. “Uh, yeah. Grandpa’s friend owns the place. It’s only a few minutes away. But if that’s where he–”
“Good. I need to get there.”
I pushed away from the bed, and my legs wobbled beneath me. Baylie reached out, catching me.
“This is insane, Chloe,” Noah argued. “They’re just going to try to get you back again.”
I reached my feet. “I know. But what other option is there?”
His mouth tightened and he looked away.
“We could call the police,” Baylie suggested incredulously. “Even if Zeke’s not in some system, what they’re doing still has to be illegal!”
I exhaled. I couldn’t stop shivering, like something inside me was just freezing more and more by the second. It felt so strange, so alien and cold, but not remotely like last night, when I’d been sick and scared and aching from what they’d done.
This was something else.
“You can’t,” Ellie said quietly.
I looked to her and Baylie did the same.
“The chief of police in your town isn’t Grandpa’s only connection in the legal system. Mom once told me that Grandpa and the… the landwalker elders… they get whatever they want when it comes to the law.” She swallowed. “The cops won’t do anything if Grandpa’s there. No matter what they find.”
I stared at her. She gave a tight shrug, looking uncomfortable and embarrassed. “We don’t have the same powers as you, so we compensate with, you know, other kinds.”
A breath left me. That was it then.
On legs I cursed for being so weak, I started for the door.
“Chloe!”
I looked back. “I’m going, Baylie.”
She stared at me. “And you seriously think I’m letting you do that alone?”
At my silence, she scoffed. Shaking her head angrily, she strode toward me.
“Come on,” she muttered as she reached over, putting her arm around my side to steady me. “Let’s go find this Zeke guy.”
With a dark look to Noah, she nodded toward the door.
He paused, and then sighed. Still grimacing reluctantly, he pulled it open.
Ellie trailed after us as we left the motel room and headed for the car.
Chapter Seventeen
Zeke
I’d lost track of time. The restraints were all that held me up now; my muscles had lost the ability to support me hours ago. More spikes sat immersed in jars on the table – Harman’s backups in case he wanted to run further tests – and shivers wracked me from the drugs he’d randomly decided to inject into my veins. Barely clinging to human form, my legs were a mess of iridescent threads tying them together and large bandages where he’d forced my scales to appear and then sheared them off. There wasn’t an inch of me that didn’t hurt somehow, though at least the ache of the ocean’s distance had stopped growing stronger a while ago, even if I didn’t know why.
One tiny mercy in this nightmare.
Over the hours, I’d tried using aveluria in my voice – Harman’s threats of his friends with cameras be damned – but nothing ever changed. He’d shake his head, give me a tired glare, and then return to his questions with a single-minded intensity that I’d started to see as pure madness. And I couldn’t hope to touch him and make the effect of the magic stronger. Any time he came close, he was careful to avoid contact with my skin, except through his tools, needles, and knives.
I thought I’d hated my brothers. Ren for what he was and Niall for what he’d become. I thought I’d hated the Sylphaen for what they wanted to do to Chloe.
I hadn’t known what hate was.
“Now, the greliarans say that your people live longer than humans, by maybe fifty years,” Harman asked while he held one of the jars up to the light and regarded the contents within. “Is that true?”
I shuddered. I knew what was coming. But I’d be damned if I gave the sick little bastard the satisfaction of thinking he’d broken me.
His mouth tightened with frustration. He reached over, picked up the metal rod on the table, and touched it to my side again.
Electricity shot through my body and I lurched in the restraints.
“I really wish we could get past this,” Harman sighed as he returned the rod to the tabletop. “After all, you know I have limited time.”
Ragged breaths left me while the shock faded back to a quivering ache. “I… will outlive you,” I rasped. “And your children. And theirs.”
And in his case, hopefully that outliving would start the moment I got down from here.
I shivered. I’d never wanted to hurt someone in my life as much as I wanted to hurt the old man at that table.
“Interesting.” He turned back to his notebook and scribbled something down. “By how long exactly?”
I tugged at the restraints, not answering. The locks holding the bars on my wrists and legs had to break soon. It’d been hours and they’d never budged, but by all that was holy, if I could just get the right leverage and angle, they had to break soon. Daylight was pouring through the grimy windows high on the metal walls, and I couldn’t hope those greliarans would wait too much longer before demanding their chance at me.
He exhaled tiredly. “This really–”
The door on the opposite side of the room opened as if in answer to my thoughts. My heart climbed my throat as Harman scrambled to his feet.
“I’m sorry, sir,” came a familiar voice. “I tried to tell them you weren’t done.”
My brow drew down at the sight of the scrawny police officer from Reidsburg. Aaron, I thought the chief had called him. His baggy uniform had been replaced with a lab coat, which fit no better than the uniform had, and his gaze darted to me as though he expected me to burst from the restraints at any moment.
Which would have been great, really. I would have loved to oblige.
Richard shoved past him.
“You asked for hours,” he snapped to Harman. “You’ve had hours.” He scanned me over. “And you haven’t exactly left us much to enjoy killing.”
His sons came into the room after him, leaving Aaron standing by the door and fidgeting like a nervous bird. Their burning eyes locked on me as they fanned out, moving like they were circling their prey while cracks spread through their skin.
My hands pulled harder at the restraints.
“I still have questions!” Harman protested. “You can’t take him yet.”
Richard ignored him. Coming up to me, he paused. “What do you think, boys? One leg broken? Maybe some ribs? How much of a chase do we want?”
Harman made a desperate sound, looking between them all while his hands clutched at the underside of the table. “You can’t,” he insisted. “I haven’t even gotten to my tests of our new suppression drug, and we–”
“Break both,” Wyatt growled.
“I’m warning you!” Harman cried. “Give me a bit more time!”
Richard chuckled. He pulled back a fist as fissures ran through his sk
in and hunger swallowed everything human in his eyes.
I tensed.
Wyatt made an angry sound and Richard froze. His attention snapped toward the far wall as his sons’ did the same.
A growl left Richard, the sound building until it turned into a roar. His fist swung forward, slamming into the metal sheet behind me and propelling it backward. I flew with it, crashing to the concrete with a force that sent pain throbbing through every bone in my body.
I twisted, trying to get a glimpse of the greliarans, and then froze.
The bars across my left wrist and my feet had both moved.
Barely breathing, I looked to the other side of the room.
“What is it?” Harman asked, trying to keep an eye to me and the others at the same time. “What’s going on?”
Snarling curses, Richard didn’t respond. He closed his eyes briefly and then glanced to his sons.
“Earl?” one of them asked.
“He got arrested, moron,” another retorted.
“Noah,” Wyatt growled.
I stopped breathing entirely. If he was here, then Chloe…
“Take the front,” Richard snapped to Wyatt. “Owen, Clay, use the back door and get around the sides. Brock, you’re with me. We’re guarding the scum-sucker.” He paused, looking to the wall as though he could see through it. “And you three? You get your hands on Noah, you break things till he stops moving but you keep him alive.”
“What if his scale-skin girlfriend’s with him?” Wyatt asked.
Richard gave him a dry look.
Wyatt smiled. Motioning to two of his brothers, he strode from the room. The remaining guy headed for something behind me. I craned my neck around and watched him take up position by a steel door I hadn’t realized was there.
“N-now,” Harman stammered. “If that young lady’s here, you need to understand, she won’t be a dehaian anymore. And I need her for further treatments and testing, so–”
“We agreed to let her go,” Richard said. “We didn’t say anything about what we’d do if she came back looking for us.”
“There’s no guarantee she’s looking for–”
“She’s probably searching for him. We’re here.” Richard grinned, the expression like ice. “That’s close enough.” He returned his attention to the wall. “Now shut it. They just drove up.”
Harman fidgeted with the table, his eyes going from me to the others and back.
I drew a careful breath as silence settled over the room. I needed to move fast if I was going to get out of all these restraints before the greliarans could stop me.
Before they could kill me. Or her.
I swallowed. The guy behind me was smaller, though the distinction was only relative to his brothers, and maybe that would give me a chance. But Richard was still here, my legs were a mess, I’d been immobilized for hours, and only that little bastard knew what drugs he’d given me in that time.
A shiver ran through me. I needed the right moment. A distraction to give me long enough to just get to my feet.
And if Chloe really was out there, I needed it to come damn soon.
Chapter Eighteen
Chloe
“Listen,” Ellie tried. “When we get there… maybe you could just stay in the car? Let me go in and see if Zeke is there? We don’t even have to stay around for your parents. It’s going to take them longer to get here than us anyway.”
I glanced to her. On the seat beside me, she fidgeted, casting worried looks from me to the country road and back.
Seeing my expression, she winced. “I-I know. It’s just… Grandpa could hurt you. He’s not a bad man, but if he got his hands on you again, or your parents came and tried to… I just don’t…”
Her gaze flicked to Baylie and Noah up front. She went silent, her worried expression deepening.
From the corner of my eye, I watched her, trying not to be creeped out. I didn’t know what to make of the girl. Pretty like a doll and anxious as a rabbit in a dog house, Ellie seemed to be a bundle of things she couldn’t quite bring herself to say. She’d saved my life. I knew that. And she’d gotten me away from my parents and her own grandfather. I was grateful as anything for that too.
But I barely knew her. I’d met her less than five minutes before Harman jabbed me with a needle – another needle; I was really sick of needles – and prior to that, I’d never seen her before in my life. I supposed anyone could try to save somebody they’d just met from something they thought was wrong, but still… it felt odd.
And somehow disturbing.
It was mostly the way she looked at me. Like she knew me, or something about me. I hadn’t forgotten how she’d wanted to talk earlier – hopefully about that, whatever that was – but meanwhile, it was just weird having someone look at you the way she was looking at me.
Shifting around on the seat, I forced my attention to the fields. There wasn’t really time to talk about it now, though. I needed to figure out how I was going to get Harman to let Zeke go, assuming the old man was at this Borman Grain place. And if he wasn’t, I needed to figure out what I’d do then.
I hadn’t come up with anything so far.
Baylie steered the car past a curve, and beyond the turn, there was just more empty country road. I tried not to sigh. Small rises in the terrain and the general height of the corn made it hard to see the horizon, but the place my dad said he’d taken us had to be around here somewhere. I had to believe Ellie wouldn’t have sent us in the wrong direction; she’d done nothing but help us thus far. But the drive felt like it was taking forever.
Another curve followed, and then a third. I shifted on the seat again, debating whether to question Ellie about her directions.
And then a collection of grain silos came into view.
“There,” Ellie said quietly.
I didn’t take my eyes from the tall structures. Maybe three miles away, they appeared and disappeared over the tops of the corn.
Noah tensed, a curse escaping him. “Pull over,” he ordered Baylie.
Glancing to him in alarm, she steered the car to the side of the road.
“What?” I asked. “What is it?”
He closed his eyes briefly and then looked back. His gaze flicked from me to Ellie, and I saw frustration flash across his face.
“They’re here,” he admitted grudgingly.
I paused in confusion. And then it clicked.
“Wait,” I said, my heart tripping over itself as it started to race. “You mean, your–”
“All five of them. They know I’m here too. Second I picked up on them, they did the same, and now they’re hiding.”
I stared at him, fighting not to give into the panic bubbling up inside. Zeke had to be there too, then. If Noah’s family was at the warehouse, then he had to be as well, but…
Zeke was fine. He wasn’t dead. They wouldn’t still be there if he was dead.
“You need to get out of here,” Noah said to me.
“No, I’m not–”
“You have to. They’ll–”
“I’m not leaving him!”
Noah stopped. Awkward silence fell on air still ringing from my shout. His brow twitched down and I couldn’t read the look in his eyes.
“Okay,” he agreed, his voice quiet and tight.
A breath left me.
He paused for a heartbeat, still watching me with that strange look in his eyes, and then he shifted back around on the seat. “Get us a bit closer,” he said to Baylie in the same tone. “I need to see where they’re hiding.”
She put the car back in gear. In silence, we drove down the country highway and turned onto the road leading to the silos.
The cornfields fell away and more of the complex appeared. A long road stretched from the main highway to Borman Grain, which mostly seemed to consist of a cluster of square buildings next to the towering silos. Those, in turn, were surrounded on two sides by large, white stora
ge domes that looked like they were preparing to take off at the command of the mothership. An aluminum-sided warehouse waited closer to the road, while a train track for shipments ran nearby.
“Stop here,” Noah ordered.
Baylie did.
I swallowed hard, studying the warehouse. Maybe half the length of a football field, and a quarter the width, the warehouse sat to the left of the road and far from the silos. Enormous garage doors, all of them closed, formed the longest side, with a single, human-sized door near the corner. A narrow, gravel parking lot fronted the building and held a brown Buick and a maroon SUV.
Ellie made a worried noise. “Grandpa.”
Noah pulled his gaze from the building. Reaching to the middle of the dashboard, he flipped the air conditioning to full blast, and then switched on the radio as well. As the white-noise drone filled the car, he turned to look at me.
I tensed, silently daring him to try to make me stay here.
He seemed to see it. His jaw muscles jumped.
“Can you run?” he asked.
I nodded, and attempted to ignore the worried look Baylie gave me in response.
He echoed the motion. “Then stay behind me. Walk on the grass not the gravel; they’ll have a harder time hearing that. And–”
“You’re greliaran, aren’t you?”
He blinked and turned to Ellie.
“That’s why you know about secrets,” she said. “You–”
She cut off, her brow furrowing, and she looked between us as though she couldn’t figure out what she was seeing.
“Listen,” he continued to me, his gaze flicking to Ellie distractedly. “They’re going to come after you. I can’t stop all of them. But when that happens…” He grimaced, as if he hated the words. “You run. We’re stronger, but you’re faster. So just run like hell.”
“What about Zeke?”
“I’ll–”
“I can get him,” Ellie interrupted.
Noah glanced to her again.
“You distract them,” she said. “I’ll get him.”
