Exalted

by Ella James

  It got under his skin.

  The others felt the same way. Carlin did not surprise him. She had never pretended to believe in even her own Candidacy. Drew shocked him. He was a Shepherd, and he had lived among the Chosen almost all his life.

  And Meredith… Her disbelief didn’t surprise him, either. But it did hurt him, more than even the doubts of The One herself.

  He cursed Dizzy and Adam. If he’d had more time, he might have been able to bring Julia, Meredith, Drew, and Carlin back to Alexandria without violence. Or at least with less bloodshed.

  Now he worried the former Candidates would never forgive him—and he was the one who should be doing the forgiving! They had aided in the abduction of The One!

  The light at the end of the square hall was growing brighter, and the tight feeling in Nathan’s chest was beginning to loosen. He walked faster, putting more distance between himself and The Three’s dank, foggy lair.

  Soon he could see the shape of the light: a door. Nathan took a deeper breath, grateful for what felt like fresh air—even though its freshness was relative. He stepped into a massive room built of the same ancient stone as the pyramid's exterior. The walls were covered in streaks of red algae that glowed faintly half-way to the hundred-foot, vaulted ceiling. It wasn’t the soothing iridescent glow of the compound’s walls, but it offered some light—enough compared to the hallways that it always seemed bright when he stepped into the yawning space.

  It was only half the size of the Virginia common room, and filled with old wooden tables and chairs; the Chosen that milled about seemed mostly listless. Nathan understood how they felt. For them, for him, the compound had been a home, a place protected and secure—until the day he and the other Shepherds had captured the Hunter Cayuzul and he’d introduced Julia into the fold. From that point on, nothing had been right.

  And yet, that defied all logic.

  Julia was The One, and Nathan had been the one to bring her home to the compound. Once there, he’d done exactly what a Shepherd should: He’d guided her. Like he’d tried to guide all the Candidates.

  Some of the Chosen stirred at his passing now, and he nodded his way to the center of the common area. He smiled reassuringly, hiding the gnawing ache in his chest. Every thought of The One, the Candidates, the compound, of anything in his life, led him back to Meredith.

  He’d spent an agonizing three days after the attack believing she was dead. He’d finally acknowledged his feelings for her, and when he’d found out she was alive it had been like he had come back to life.

  But now she felt like he had betrayed her, and he didn’t know how he could convince her otherwise. She wouldn’t believe anything he said.

  Nathan heard a roar of noise ahead, near the mouth of the hall that was his destination, and he walked faster. He was supposed to meet Meredith, Drew, Carlin and the Shepherd who was guarding them off the plane—he glanced at his watch—now.

  He broke into a sprint. There had been rumblings since the attack on the compound, disloyal talk. Blasphemy against The Three. Questioning of their power.

  There was blasphemy in the ranks, as well as wild rumors, some that went so far as to blame the attack on Julia. Nathan did his best to quell the absurd talk, but the Chosen were disheartened. Angry. And, unlike usual, The Three had given him very little guidance. Their minds, he knew, were elsewhere.

  A roar rose over the pounding of Nathan's footfall. It sounded like some kind of fight had broken out. He growled his frustration with his Shepherds. More so than the older, more bureaucratic Bishops, Shepherds were to lead other Chosen by example. They were also supposed to maintain order and discipline, something severely lacking in the last two weeks.

  Someone screamed, and Nathan ran harder. To his vigilant ears, it sounded like Meredith. His whole body burned, and he imagined what he would do to the person that made her scream.

  This was wrong. So wrong. At the compound, revolt had never even seemed like a possibility, but here…

  Somewhere between Virginia and Alexandria, everything had changed.

  Chapter Seven

  Andrew wasn’t impressed with the Alexandria compound. Under other circumstances he would have enjoyed a trip into a pyramid—a real one with an actual pharaoh, and maybe even a curse.

  However, this one made him shudder. The mud-packed halls, while no doubt impressive in The Three's ancient times, were too narrow and dark. The whole place glowed a dull red due to something on the walls that looked like mold, and it was such an impossible web to navigate that their guard, a red-haired Shepherd named Clarissa, had needed to consult her map twice.

  His opinion of the common room was much the same when Clarissa led him, Carlin, and Meredith into it. It was large, but not nearly so big or so inviting as the old common room where he’d had some genuine childhood fun.

  He felt a brief pang of nostalgia, and then he noticed the Chosen in the room. There were maybe two dozen on their end, and they were staring at Meredith, Carlin, Clarissa, and him with anger.

  Andrew spied Dizzy, near the center of the crowd. “That’s them,” she said, and he didn’t need to be Meredith to know that the vibe in the room got a whole lot darker.

  She did confirm it, though. “This isn’t good.”

  The crowd stirred, converging as people left conversations or chairs and began moving toward the four of them.

  Is this never going to end?

  Though his hands remained bound, Andrew stepped in front of Meredith and Carlin, who had, thank God, already been healed. He glared at Clarissa. “What’s going on here?”

  She looked surprised, and a little uncertain. “Back to your business,” she cried at the crowd.

  They kept coming, and soon they were chanting: “Traitors. Traitors. Traitors.”

  Someone yelled, “You led The One astray!”

  A fat man nodded. “Now we'll never reach Heaven!”

  Carlin stuck up her hands and waved at the crowd, as if to say, yeah, suck it. Which was probably a bad idea, as they came closer. Andrew glanced at the hallway behind them, fervently wishing he could untie his hands, and at that moment, Carlin started floating.

  “Car, what the hell—”

  Someone shot her with blue lightning, and she fell to the ground. After that, everything exploded. The crowd rushed them, and the girls and Drew were lost in a storm of angry faces and flying fists. Blue fire was everywhere, and it wasn't long before the mob started fighting itself.

  Clarissa tried to yank them back down the hall, but someone was blocking her. Simon, a short, broad Shepherd three years Andrew’s senior. His power was to the body what Dizzy’s was to the mind, and when he touched Clarissa, she crumbled to the ground in a twitching pile.

  “Simon! What the hell!”

  He grabbed Andrew’s shoulders and squeezed hard. He was very strong, which Andrew had forgotten.

  “I can’t believe you betrayed us,” Simon said, his voice shaking. “A fellow Shepherd.” He backhanded Andrew, and Andrew saw black spots.

  When Andrew came to, he was on the ground, and his left ankle was being stamped by an elderly Chosen woman with curly white hair. “Tell me about the Nephilim!” she raged as she kicked him. “Was that attack staged? My daughter died!”

  Andrew rolled, trying to avoid her feet as the crowd pressed in around him. He couldn’t see Meredith or Carlin, and when he tried to call for them, someone kicked him in the face.

  “You deserve to die!” the dark-haired assailant screamed, and for a terrifying moment Andrew really believed that was what was going to happen. He had a moment to reflect on his life, wasted in pursuit of the end of the world.

  Then out of nowhere, Nathan was there.

  “STAND DOWN!”

  Andrew was shocked by the power of his voice. Immediately the crowd quieted. No one froze, per se, but they all stopped what they were doing and turned to the source of the command. Andrew picked himself up and spied Nathan, eyes flaring as he strode to a tall man with a
pinched nose and dusty blond hair. Nathan backhanded the man, who fell to the ground, and the spell seemed to break.

  Angry voices rose as Nathan bent over to pick up Meredith. “REMAIN CALM,” he commanded as he wrapped an arm around her.

  Andrew looked for Dizzy, but she was long gone.

  “Drew,” Carlin whispered beside him.

  With her brown curls matted and her makeup smeared, she looked uncharacteristically disheveled—so did he. “Come on,” he said, nodding toward Nathan. She was reluctant, and he didn’t blame her. “Better than the alternative,” he said, under his breath, and she nodded.

  Nathan commanded Clarissa to cut their binds, and they followed him into another hall, walking quickly. He finally led them to a small room with a hole in the floor.

  “DOWN,” he commanded, and Andrew didn’t even try to resist. He dropped himself inside a very small tunnel, barely wide enough for Nathan's and his shoulders. Carlin dropped down behind him, her hand finding his as Nathan led them to a bunch of rooms.

  “Prison cells,” Carlin cried.

  “For your protection,” Nathan insisted.

  “No way,” Andrew said.

  But they could hear the cries of the angry Chosen echoing nearby.

  “You can get out soon, I promise.”

  “Why would we trust you, Nathan?” Meredith’s voice was empty.

  “I’m trying to keep you safe.”

  “That sounds like the same thing you always say.”

  “Where is Julia?” Carlin demanded.

  “She’s meeting with The Three,” he said almost proudly. “She’s going to be fine.”

  “I’m not staying here,” Meredith said.

  “Yes you are.”

  Nathan shoved her into one of the small, mud rooms and she looked mad enough to kill. Andrew lifted his arms, prepared to fight Nathan if necessary, but Nathan opened his mouth, and Andrew's will was gone.

  “GO INTO THE CELL, ANDREW. KEEP MEREDITH SAFE.” Andrew had the brief thought that Nathan had never turned his gift toward him in the past. Then he was following Meredith inside.

  “Fuck you, Nathan.” Carlin slapped him in the jaw, and Nathan caught her arm, pushing her inside.

  “I'm trying to help you, too, Carlin.”

  He slammed the iron door shut and glared through the bars. “Stay put. I’ll be back soon.”

  Andrew listened to the pounding of the other Shepherd's footsteps until Meredith turned away. His gaze went with her; he watched as she put her hands over her face, breathing deeply to keep from crying. He felt a pang of sympathy for her, and anger at their situation.

  To Carlin, he said, “We need to find a way out of here.”

  She nodded, looking slowly around their cell. “I wish we had Mekal with us. He could open any door.”

  Andrew nodded, wondering briefly if the short boy had survived. Sighing, he kicked at one of the walls, then noticed a small depression where his foot had connected. He bent to inspect it, shaking his head. “It can’t be this easy,” he said.

  “What?” Carlin asked, kneeling down beside him.

  “The walls are dirt, right? Dirt and whatever this red slime is. What if we can dig ourselves out?”

  Chapter Eight

  Nathan slammed the stone door behind him and marched through the packed mud hall, his hard footsteps fueled by his raging temper.

  The moment he’d returned from tucking Meredith and her band of ignorant deserters safely into a holding cell, he’d called a meeting of several powerful Bishops and all his Shepherds. Well, first he’d ordered Shea to fashion the illusion of a bullhorn, and he’d forced her to magnify his already powerful voice—which was even more powerful in Alexandria, The Three's seat of power. He’d ordered the mob in the commons into silence, and he’d threatened to imprison anyone who uttered even one word in the next twelve hours. He knew the limitations of his gift, and he figured they'd soon be back to chaos—but for the moment he felt okay leaving them.

  The meeting with his fellow Shepherds and the Bishops had not gone well. He’d managed to keep them subdued with the strength of his voice, but they’d still been angry and full of questions for which he had no answers. Almost every one of them was preoccupied by wild rumors, and when he’d questioned them about the origin of the rumors, several them insisted that The One’s messenger had come into their dreams and told them of the impending removal of the net.

  The ‘messenger’ was the being called Edan. Nathan felt sure of it. He didn’t know anyone else with, as one smitten Bishop had put it, 'beautiful honey-toned hair and haunting gray eyes'.

  Nathan followed the hall until it started slanting downward; he tried to ignore the sick feeling whirling in his gut.

  It wasn’t the uproar among his fellow Chosen that had him worried, or even what appeared to be a mass illusion precipitated by Edan. It was what that mass illusion signified when stacked with other evidence.

  Evidence Nathan had seen firsthand. Evidence that indicated he'd made a terrible mistake.

  It had happened after Meredith had cursed at him and cried over him, while Nathan lay bleeding badly from his leg near the entrance to the resort in St. Moritz. Julia’s Nephilim had swooped down, and a sobbing Meredith had wrapped herself around the Hunter, tucking herself under one of his hideous wings.

  Nathan had been left there, and in his pain, he’d thought he was suffering a delusion. Out of thin air, Edan had appeared, introducing himself as one of The Three’s “consultants”, which Nathan knew was a lie. The guy wore a smug, ironic look that told Nathan he didn’t care about the Chosen at all.

  “I don’t need…your help,” he’d rasped, but he was already dizzy from blood loss.

  The smirk was back. “You don’t, but what about Meredith? You don’t trust her with a vicious Hunter, do you?”

  Nathan’s blood—what remained of it, anyway—had boiled. “What do you know about Meredith?”

  “I can help you rescue her, and I can help you find The One.”

  “Who the hell are you?” Nathan had moaned.

  In answer he saw a horrifying mental image of Meredith, gutted with a blood dagger in his bedroom from childhood.

  “Are you Chosen?” he bit out, though he knew there wasn’t a Chosen who could plant such a powerful vision in his head.

  Edan scoffed, then healed Nathan and gave him a time and place.

  “What do you get out of this? Who are you?”

  “A friend of your enemy’s enemy.”

  Nathan had assembled his team with trepidation, but Edan’s information had been legit. Nathan had captured Julia and locked Meredith safely away, where she'd be unable to make her usual errors in judgment. He’d tried to forget the being that aided him, but now he had no choice but to find out more about Edan.

  It was a bold move, approaching The Three with a question, but Nathan wasn’t sure what else to do. If he didn’t get the Chosen under control, things would go from bad to worse. The ones who’d worked themselves into a fervor could start a riot, putting everyone, including Meredith, in danger.

  There were pale stone doors on either side of the torch-lined hall, spaced apart at odd intervals. It was impossible to be sure he’d taken the correct route down; unlike at the compound, the paths here never changed or disappeared, but there were dozens of them, and Nathan wasn't sure if each descent led to the same place. He wondered what was behind the pale stone doors. Holding chambers? Meeting rooms? Everything here was so much more…primitive than at the compound. It made sense; the pyramid at Alexandria had been The Three’s home in ancient times. But as Nathan walked softly down the cramped hall, his chest felt tight with dread and fear.

  He tried to banish the feeling. He trusted The Three. His powerful ancestors were ancient and wise, and despite their tendency toward frightening displays of gift and rumbling gruffness, Nathan thought they had always seemed judicious.

  Meredith’s wide, concerned brown eyes flashed in his mind, and he recalled what s
he’d told him about Julia and her headaches. If it were true, she was most likely overstating the harm, or misunderstanding what, exactly, was happening.

  The Three had chosen Julia. She was to be honored, not harmed.

  They did tell me to apprehend her any way I could.

  But they didn’t want him to hurt her.

  And he hadn’t. Even Shea hadn't, with the illusion that helped him capture Julia.

  Dizzy had.

  Nathan shook his head, thinking of the sick girl. Although she'd sneaked away, he’d been informed that Dizzy had ignited the angry scene that he’d had to break up in the commons. And she seemed to take a perverse pleasure in hurting The One. There was also the insidious rumor that Dizzy was a more direct descendant of Methuselah, a rumor Nathan was sure Dizzy had minted herself.

  The hallway leveled off, and Nathan’s heart hammered. At the compound he’d had to cross the water to reach them, always an unpleasant experience. Here, he simply had to follow the hall that cut through the center of the pyramid down, down, down, through many doors, around many curves, until it narrowed further, he passed the stone doors, and he began to feel their presence.

  He rarely showed up uninvited, almost never without some kind of summons. Often if he had a question, he would simply find himself summoned. The summons was more a feeling than anything else.

  Nathan had a bad feeling now. It made his arm hairs stand on end. Another step and the bad feeling materialized into faint screams. His feet moved faster as his chest pumped. The screams were male, and they were punctuated with moans.

  The Three’s chamber was at the end of the hall. Water and fog. Everything down here smelled like dirt. Old dirt. The walls felt like they would close in on him, but Nathan kept moving. When the screams made his eardrums ache, he felt certain he was right about the voice. He threw open the door, washed with dread, and saw a horrible sight.

  Edan: not a Chosen, not a Nephilim, but a Demon. He was on his knees in the mud, his arms spread out and chained to the wall.