The Guardians (MORE Trilogy)

by Franklin, T. M.

  “All right.” He relented, albeit reluctantly. “Let’s go, but stay behind me.”

  “My hero,” she said, batting her eyelashes.

  Tiernan ignored her and set off through the tunnel. It wasn’t long before they came to a dead end, a stone wall facing them, and two openings on either side blocked by makeshift metal doors.

  “This one,” Ava whispered, touching to the door to the right.

  Tiernan nodded and pressed his ear to the door, listening for a moment before giving it a tentative shove. It stood firm, somehow wedged into the thick rock.

  “Stand back,” he told Ava as he drew his pistol. He took a deep breath and kicked the door.

  With a crash and a shower of dirt and rocks, it collapsed forward onto the dirt floor, revealing a small room carved into the rock. A young woman sat curled up on a cot in the corner, watching him with wide and frightened eyes. Tiernan held the gun pointed at her as he advanced into the room, but the girl didn’t move. She sat, paralyzed, not even blinking, until Ava reached out and touched his arm. He’d been so intent on the girl that he hadn’t even realized Ava had followed him into the room.

  “I think you can put that away.” Ava started to step around Tiernan, but he threw out an arm to stop her.

  “She’s just a girl,” Ava said.

  “Looks can be deceiving.” He’d seen it too many times. Deadly purpose wrapped up in innocent packaging. For all he knew, this girl could burst their internal organs with a thought.

  “She was locked in this room,” Ava said slowly, as if explaining to a small child. “Which means she needs our help.”

  Tiernan eyed the girl for a long moment. “She was locked in this room for a reason. Maybe we need protection from her.”

  The girl swallowed nervously, watching him like a skittish colt, her legs twitching with what he suspected was an instinct to run. With a resigned sigh, he lowered the weapon to his side.

  Ava moved around Tiernan, ignoring his warning grumble. The girl swiveled her anxious gaze to Ava, watching as she came closer until her knees finally bumped the edge of the cot. The girl was young—maybe fourteen or fifteen—her dark hair chopped at odd angles, the chin-length strands streaked with blue and purple. Cheekbones carved sharp shadows on her face, echoed by the straight lines and corners of her thin limbs and joints. She wore no contact lenses, so her eyes were her most compelling feature—almond-shaped, one almost black, the other pale green. She stared at Ava without blinking, giving the impression she saw much more than most.

  “We won’t hurt you,” Ava said quietly, feeling the tension in the room. “We can help you get out of here. Who are you?”

  The girl swallowed nervously. “Emma.”

  “Emma? That’s your name?”

  She nodded. “Emma Reiko.”

  Ava smiled encouragingly and sat down next to her, smoothing her hand over the rough woolen blanket. “I’m Ava. This is Tiernan.”

  Tiernan peered back out into the tunnel. “We don’t have time for this.”

  Ava tipped her head slightly in acknowledgement. “We’re looking for someone,” she told Emma, trying to rein in her anxiety with steady breaths and gentling tones. “Was there . . . someone else here? A man with dark hair and blue eyes? He might have been wearing glasses.”

  Emma licked her lips, swallowed hard again, and darted a glance at Tiernan. Turning back to Ava, she nodded, whispering, “You mean Caleb.”

  Ava tensed. “You know Caleb? You saw him?”

  Emma nodded again, loosening the hold on her knees so she could slide off the cot. She pointed out the door to the other room across the tunnel. “They kept him in there, I think.”

  Without another word, Ava shot to her feet, racing out into the tunnel and pounding on the metal door as she shouted Caleb’s name. Tiernan touched her shoulder, but she shrugged him off and reached down for her gift. Instead of a slow build, it shot forward in a burst of power, the metal door buckling in the center before slamming into the wall, all but folded in half. She rushed into the room, coming to an abrupt stop in the center of the dirt floor. A cot similar to Emma’s sat folded against the wall, but other than that, the room was empty.

  Tiernan walked in behind her, staying close to the wall as he watched her carefully. Ava sighed, her power settling as quickly as it had surged.

  “He’s gone,” she said, almost mystified by the overwhelming sense of loss. “I didn’t feel him, but I hoped . . .”

  Tiernan bent over to touch the cot and closed his eyes a moment. “He was here, though. Not too long ago. An hour. Maybe two.”

  Ava’s senses tingled, pushing her anxiety and despair aside with a rush of fear. “They’re coming back.” She left the room with one last longing glance and found Emma waiting for them in the doorway to her own cell. Tiernan passed them, heading down the tunnel, his gun held at the ready.

  “Emma. We can take you away from these people. To someplace safe,” she said, tentatively reaching out to touch her shoulder. “But we have to go now. Before they come back.”

  The girl paled, eyes wide with undisguised terror as she scrambled away from Ava and backed up against the wall. “No. If I run, they’ll come after me.” She shook her head slowly and took gasping breaths between panicked words. “It’ll be worse. It’s always worse if I try and run—”

  Ava worried the girl was going to hyperventilate. “It’s okay,” she said, keeping her voice low and soothing.

  “You don’t understand—”

  Tiernan’s hissed voice echoed down the tunnel. “Ava! Now!”

  She approached Emma with outstretched hands, compassion overriding the urgency of the moment. “I know you’re scared,” she said. “But I’m telling you, we can keep you safe.”

  “You can’t—”

  “We can.” Ava gripped the girl’s shoulders gently and looked into her eyes with reassurance. “I know you don’t know us and this is all scary, but time is running out. If we’re going to go, we need to go now.

  “You need to trust us. Let us help you.” Ava squeezed her shoulders. “Please.”

  Emma stared into Ava’s eyes for a long moment, then let out a shaky breath and nodded once. She cast a worried glance toward the door before ducking to grab a coat and a small bag and slipping it over her head and one shoulder. She took Ava’s hand and allowed herself to be led through the tunnel after Tiernan.

  They found him huddled behind the crate by the tunnel entrance, peering around the corner.

  He didn’t look back as Ava came up behind him. “How far?” he asked. “Do we have time to get out?”

  Ava reached out with her gift, a sinking feeling settling in her stomach. “No. They’re too close. Probably already at the cave entrance.”

  Tiernan’s jaw flexed as he looked around the cavern, trying to come up with a plan of action. He signaled for them to follow him as he crossed the room, taking up a spot against the wall next to the opening leading to the tunnel going outside. He flexed his fingers around the gun, and said in a low voice, “You’ll have to create a distraction again. With any luck, we can get them headed down that other tunnel before they realize we’re here. Maybe with so many Race imprints, it will be hard for them to pinpoint our exact location.”

  “You think that will really work?” Ava asked.

  “Probably not.” He shrugged. “So you might have to reenact that trick with the door—maybe with that crate over there.” He gestured with the gun across the room, looking at her sideways. “Do you think you can do that?”

  Ava knew what he was asking. Could she hurt someone? Could she possibly kill someone? She’d done it before, with Arthur, but that was spur-of-the-moment, unplanned—a them-or-us situation where she didn’t have time to think about it beforehand. This was different. She looked at Emma, clutching her hand, innocent and scared, and thought of Caleb.

  Caleb.

  Somewhere out there. And once the Council learned Caleb was still on the run, they’d most likely take m
atters into their own hands. In other words, hunt Caleb down. She couldn’t let that happen. They had to find him first.

  With grim determination, she nodded sharply. “I can do it.”

  They waited in silence, and Ava could feel each step as the group got closer. She could tell when Tiernan felt them as well. He squared his shoulders, clenched his fists, and braced his feet in a wide stance, preparing for a fight. She turned to the tunnel across the room and readied her own weapons, calling on her gift as the first footsteps echoed through the cavern. She reached out for the metal door she’d knocked down, picking it up and letting it clatter against the stone floor. The sound amplified in the tunnel, and it wasn’t long before their pursuers ran into the cavern. They huddled in the shadows as the four Rogues scanned the room, but to Ava’s surprise, they didn’t even seem to notice them.

  Then she realized it wasn’t only her own gift she was feeling. Where she held Emma’s hand, she felt the tingle of unfamiliar power running along her skin. She gaped at the girl, whose eyes were closed and brow creased in concentration, and watched as the Rogues took off down the far tunnel.

  Tiernan tugged on Ava’s sleeve, and she stumbled after him.

  The three of them ran down the tunnel in the opposite direction, and Ava felt a rush of hope as the light of the entrance finally showed ahead.

  They raced out into the sunshine, and Ava stopped and turned around.

  “What are you doing?” Tiernan snapped, tucking his gun back into his pants. “Let’s go.”

  “Just buying us some time,” Ava said, calling on her gift again.

  With a low rumble, the front of the cave shuddered and collapsed in on itself, kicking up a cloud of dust. When it finally cleared, a pile of dirt and rocks lay where the entrance had been.

  “Nice,” Tiernan said with an appreciative grin. “Remind me never to tick you off.”

  They turned and headed toward the car at a slightly slower pace, knowing their pursuers would have to do some digging before they could take up the chase. Emma kept eyeing Tiernan with something between awe and fear, and Ava finally nudged her shoulder lightly.

  “He’s big and scary looking, but he’s not so bad,” she said, earning an irritated glare from Tiernan. She ignored him and asked, “Was Caleb all right? Did you see . . . did they hurt him?”

  Emma shook her head, but she wouldn’t meet Ava’s eyes.

  “Did they hurt you?”

  Emma didn’t answer; instead she bit her lip and reached up to tuck a lock of purple hair behind her ear. “Are you a friend of Caleb’s?” she asked.

  “Yes. I think he’s in trouble. I need to find him.” She glanced at Tiernan. “We need to find him.”

  Emma nodded, her pale skin seeming even more translucent in the bright sunlight. “Can I come with you? To find him?”

  “Absolutely not,” Tiernan snarled as he topped a hill and stomped heavily down the other side.

  “What Tiernan means,” Ava said pointedly, “is it’s probably going to be pretty dangerous. It’s better if we take you somewhere where you’ll be safe.”

  “But I . . . I need to go with you,” Emma said, her voice taking on a pleading tone. “I need to fix him.”

  Ava’s skin chilled and she stopped in her tracks. “What do you mean, ‘fix him’?”

  Emma wrapped her arms around her stomach, her fingers digging into the puffy red coat she wore. “I did something . . . they made me do . . . something to him.”

  Ava felt her gift flare in a rush of possessive alarm, remembering the feel of Emma’s power in the cave. “What did you do to him?” she asked, fighting to keep control. Her power pushed against that control, poking at it angrily.

  “They made me do it,” Emma said, eyes wide as her voice wavered. “They said it would be worse for both of us if I didn’t.”

  Ava took a deep breath, searching for some compassion, some reassurance as she started walking again. “What did you do, Emma? Please tell me.”

  They crested another hill and followed the trail leading back to the Jeep.

  Emma eyed Ava carefully and said, “I can affect people’s minds. Block memories sometimes, other times change them.”

  “Change memories?” Tiernan glanced back, suddenly interested.

  “Yeah. Or change the mind itself—how people think, their personalities sometimes. They—the Rogues, did you know they’re Rogues?”

  Ava nodded.

  “They had me change Caleb. They needed him to work with them—to forget his loyalty to the Council. So I had to instill doubt in him. Make him doubt the Council, the Law, his purpose as a Protector. Open his mind to the possibility of something different.”

  Ava felt nauseous as a wave of panic curdled her stomach. “You made him want to work with the Rogues?”

  “I didn’t want to do it,” Emma said, pleading. “They made me. That’s why you have to let me come with you. I need to fix this. I can put Caleb back to the way he—” With a choked shriek, she flew backward and slammed against a tree.

  It took Ava a moment to realize she’d done that. Her power enveloped her, feeding on her fear—her rage—and Emma stared blankly back at her, terror sparking tears in her eyes. The pounding of Ava’s heart echoed in her ears, blood rushing under her skin as her gift held Emma tight against the tree. She could hear Tiernan speaking to her in a low voice, but at first it was just a muddle—white noise under the screaming of her anger.

  “Ava, let her go.”

  She felt cool fingers against the heated skin of her wrist and blinked down at Tiernan’s hand carefully wrapped around it.

  “She’s a victim here. Just like Caleb. Don’t hurt her.”

  She looked up at him.

  “You need to calm down,” he said. “Let her go.”

  Ava took a deep breath . . . and another. Slowly, resentfully, her gift receded, and Emma slid down the tree into a shivering heap, curled up among the gnarled roots.

  “I’m sorry,” Ava whispered. “I didn’t mean—”

  “We need to talk about this later.” Tiernan reached down, and Emma shrank back. He rolled his eyes and offered her a hand, which she took at last, allowing him to haul her to her feet. “Jeep’s just over the rise,” he said, releasing Emma as he took off in long strides.

  Ava and Emma followed behind at a distance, neither meeting the other’s eyes.

  Once they’d finally reached the Jeep, Emma slid into the backseat and shrugged out of her coat. She pulled her legs up, wrapping her bony arms around her knees, and wiped at her nose with the back of her hand.

  Ava looked through the windshield, ignoring Tiernan’s significant glances. It was only when they pulled out onto the main road that she finally sighed heavily and turned around to look at Emma. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have done that back there. I know you didn’t hurt Caleb on purpose. It’s just that . . . Caleb is important to me. I need to make sure he’s all right.”

  Emma unfolded her body and reached over the seat to touch Ava’s shoulder tentatively. “I can help you,” she said. “I will. I’ll undo what I did and he’ll be . . . Caleb again. The Caleb you know.”

  Ava wasn’t sure that they had an alternative. If Emma changed Caleb, she’d have to change him back. Who knew if there was anyone else who could undo what she’d done, and it wasn’t as if they could spend the time looking.

  “How long have you been with the Rogues?” Ava asked.

  Emma sat back, resuming her curled up position as she looked out the window. “Since I was a little girl.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Seventeen. Almost eighteen,” she said the way seventeen-year-olds did, with a slight lift of her chin.

  Ava smiled briefly. “And what you did to Caleb—did they make you do that to other people, too?”

  Emma’s gaze darted back out the window as she swallowed thickly, her eyes fluttering closed. “They made me do a lot of things.”

  “How?” Tiernan eyed her throug
h the rearview mirror, ignoring Ava’s reproving look. “If you could do to Caleb what you say you did, why didn’t you fight back? Make them let you go?”

  Despite her protective feelings toward the girl, Ava found herself almost breathless, waiting for the answer.

  Emma picked at a loose thread on her sweater, avoiding Tiernan’s hostile gaze and Ava’s more concerned one. “They have ways,” she said, her voice low and almost brittle. “Drugs and . . . pain.” She rubbed at her temple, eyes drifting shut as if remembering something unpleasant, and when she opened them again, they were glazed and almost blank. “Let’s just say I’m not the only one able to affect someone’s mind. Maybe it makes me a coward, but after a while, I . . .” She looked away and swallowed heavily.

  Ava felt a rush of empathy for the girl and blinked back a prickling of tears. She swiped at her eyes and turned to Tiernan. “So, what now? Are you going to call Andreas again?”

  Tiernan glared at her, with a significant jerk of his head toward the backseat. Obviously, he still didn’t trust Emma, regardless of what she said.

  “We’re kind of in this together now, I think,” Ava said, barely resisting the urge to roll her eyes. “A little late for suspicions, don’t you think?”

  Tiernan apparently got what Ava wasn’t saying—that if Emma had the power she said, she could have turned either of them over to the Rogues at any point. Really, if she could do what she said, and they had pretty good evidence that she could, she could have made them turn themselves in. Or even turned them Rogue.

  Ava felt a bit nauseous at the thought. Still, it seemed apparent that they were on the same side. And she couldn’t get past the fact that they needed Emma if they were going to help Caleb.

  Tiernan may not have been a mind reader, but it didn’t take him long to catch up with Ava’s train of thought. With a disgruntled noise, he picked up his phone and called Andreas.

  Chapter 8

  North. According to the sensor, they were to head north.

  Tiernan clenched his jaw in frustration. He hated depending on Andreas and his super-sensor, but Caleb’s trail had disappeared before they’d reached the Jeep and he really had no alternative. Someone was helping Caleb evade them. Someone was covering his trail, and apparently, even masking his shifts, making it more difficult for the sensor to track him.