by D. S. Murphy
“There it is,” Luke said finally, pointing out a short, rectangular building. Out in front was some kind of tattered red and white awning, over metal boxes with pumps attached. Long rubber hoses coiled like snakes beneath the dry weeds. Luke pushed through the jagged, broken glass doors and stepped inside. It had been a store once, but the floor and counters were full of debris and plastic wrappings, old machines and a cash register. We ducked behind the counter and held our breath for several minutes.
“I don’t think anyone followed us,” April said finally.
She seemed so young sometimes, I forgot that she had much more experience surviving in the streets that I had. I bet it would have been easier for her to move around on her own. Together, we stood out, we made too much noise.
We barely spoke for the first twenty minutes. Luke kept checking his watch.
“How long have we been here?” I asked.
“Nearly an hour,” Luke said. He must have seen the worry on my face.
“He’s not late, not yet. He’ll be here.”
The sky was starting to darken as dusk settled, the scorched clouds of ash turning an angry gray and red as the sun dropped towards the horizon. I froze as I heard gunshots in the distances.
Then an explosion tore through ground, rattling the broken windows and rumbling like thunder. I stood up quickly and rushed outside. On the horizon, I could see a dark plume of black smoke, rising from the direction we came in.
My heart pounded in my chest as dark smoke filled the sky, along with flashes of bright flame.
“What the hell was that?” Jazmine asked.
“They must be trying to blow their way in,” Camina said. Luke shook his head.
“It’s protocol,” he said. “In the event we were discovered, Jacob had explosives set up throughout the area. A controlled demolition.”
My throat tightened painfully and my knees felt weak. Trevor and Penelope could have still been inside.
“I’m sure they got out,” Jazmine whispered, squeezing my hand. I could barely feel her touch. A rushing noise filled my ears and I felt dizzy.
“He wouldn’t have done it unless the building was already cleared,” Luke said. “Unless the elite had gotten inside somehow, and it was too late.”
Camina punched him in the shoulder, hard.
“He didn’t know Trevor had gone back for Penelope,” I said. “They should have been here by now.”
“Maybe your elite buddy didn’t want to come. If she didn’t attack him right away, she would have run off by herself, like a wild animal.”
“No, she’d never.” But then, why would she trust Trevor, she didn’t even know him.
“I should have gone myself,” I said.
“We’ve got to keep moving,” Luke said. “We need to find shelter before dark. If he’s alive, he’ll find us.”
“How?” I snapped, turning on him. “How will he find us? We’re waiting, till he gets here.”
Minutes ticked by, another thirty at least. I had to remind myself to keep breathing, trying to keep my thoughts from spiraling. I didn’t know what I would do if I lost Trevor. He was my rock, even if he was a pain in the ass sometimes. He always kept me safe. Even though I left him to be with Damien; even though I knew how much that choice had cost him. I’d sent him back into danger, to save an elite. His sworn enemy. And he’d done it, for me.
Movement caught my eye and I lifted my head. Dark figures moved through the ash, coming towards us quickly.
Relief washed over my face and I ran towards them, but then froze when I saw there were three figures, not two, and they all moved like men. They were running – no, walking fast, impossibly fast – down the deserted street, past the abandoned cars, their rusted frames warped by gnarled roots.
A second later and I could see them clearly, despite the bright, swirling embers and heavy black flakes of ash. My throat hitched in my chest when I saw the sneer on Nigel’s face.
He was on me before I could react. My sword was halfway drawn but he knocked it to the side. April ducked around the corner of the building. Luke pulled up a shotgun and fired off one round. The shot caught Bryce in the stomach and blood pooled into a jagged stain. He frowned, and a second later grabbed the gun and smacked Luke ferociously on the head.
“I liked this shirt,” he said. Luke’s eyes rolled back and he crumbled to the ground. Camina was faster. She landed three blows and a kick to the chin before Bryce caught her arm and spun her around. Jazmine tossed one of the short knives strapped to her thigh but Nigel caught it in midair.
“Some friends you’ve made, Chosen One,” he said with a grin.
“Don’t call me that,” I growled.
“We’re chosen,” Jazmine said, squirming as Thomas put her in a chokehold. “Protected.”
“No, you aren’t,” Thomas said. “Not any more. Not way out here.”
“There’s nobody else to protect you now,” Nigel leered. The deep red gouges across his cheek had already started healing, though bloody bandages still covered one eye.
“It’s just you, and me. Let’s finish what we started earlier.”
My muscles strained against his grip as his arms wrapped around me, squeezing the air out of my lungs. I gasped for breath, my head felt dizzy from lack of oxygen.
The bracelet on my wrist let out a soft beeping alarm. After all of today’s excitement, I’d burned through the elixir I’d had earlier and was running on empty.
“Looks like you’re out of juice,” Nigel said. “I’m halfway tempted to give you more, just so we can keep things fair. I’ve been waiting for this a long time,” he whispered, his cold lips trailing the nape of my neck. “It seems somehow anticlimactic. You’re so weak, it’s disgusting.”
I shivered, kicking hard against his shin, but it was no use. I flinched as his teeth grazed my skin. Then I felt them sink into my flesh. I felt his muscles flex, getting stronger as he drained the life from me, my blood staining his lips and filling his veins.
He paused, taking a deep, satisfied breath. Crimson blood ran down his pale chin, turning my stomach.
“Interesting,” he said, licking his lips like an animal. “More flavor than I would have guessed, from someone as ordinary as you.”
“Stop it,” a shaky voice said. April stood in front of us, looking small and weak, holding a vial and a syringe.
“Or what?” Bryce asked.
“Or we’ll kill you,” April said.
She waited until the elite had finished laughing, before holding up the syringe.
“We’ve created an antidote to the elixir. It will make you human again. Weak, mortal. Just like us.”
Bryce and Thomas exchanged glances.
“There’s no such thing,” Nigel said.
“It’s true,” I said, backing April’s bluff. “You must have heard of Quandom, of what happened there. What the king did to them. But do you know why? A man named John Patten stole research from the citadel. He engineered a cure.”
I wasn’t sure how much of this was news, but Nigel’s pupils widened in recognition. He must have heard some of it before, enough to worry him.
“Let her go. Now,” April said, taking a step forward, the syringe clenched in her shaking fist.
“Step any closer to me and I’ll snap her neck,” Nigel growled. “You should know better than to try and take a bone away from a dog.”
“What an exotic morsel you are,” Bryce added. “I might have you for dessert after I’ve finished with this one.”
“Let’s just kill her and be done with it,” Thomas said. Nigel nodded at him, and Thomas let Jazmine go and moved towards April. She screamed and stumbled backwards. Jazmine, now that her hands were free, pulled another dagger from the sheath on her thigh and flung it at him, striking him deep in the shoulder.
Then she spun and slashed at Bryce’s arm, cutting it deep to the bone. Camina bowed her head and slurped a mouthful of his elite blo
od, then flung her head back, cracking his nose. She broke his grasp and elbowed him hard in the ribs. He stumbled back, surprised, but then backhanded her so hard she went tumbling.
A ferocious snarl tore through the air as a dark blur leapt at him from behind, smashing him into a container truck hard enough to dent the metal. He cringed away from the large, shaggy slagpaw as another figure emerged through the ash.
“Hey boys,” Penelope said, tossing her hair over her shoulder. She looked like hell, after weeks in a cell, but I could tell the elite recognized her. She was wielding a long sharp spear, edged with a curved blade at one end.
“You’re dead,” Nigel said, a tremor of anxiety in his voice. “I watched you die.”
“Death is more of a concept,” she said. “Seems it didn’t really agree with me.”
Bryce got up and rushed at her, but she was fast. Maybe not as strong as he was, but she’d been chosen, and a champion. Even though she was newly elite, she knew how to defend herself, and the deep wound on Bryce’s arm slowed him down.
Jazmine and Camina were fighting Thomas, which left Nigel to Trevor and me. The slagpaw growled, stalking forward, saliva dripping from its massive jaws. Nigel held me in front of him like a protective shield. I knew one-on-one most elite could take a slagpaw or two.
I was too drained to fight, which meant if Trevor went after Nigel, he could die. I glanced at April, who was still on the ground, and gestured to her frantically. It took her a minute to catch on, but then she threw me the vial. I caught it in one hand and stabbed Nigel in a fluid sweep, plunging the sparkly pink contents into his neck. He gasped, swatting at his throat with bulging eyes. He knocked the empty syringe on the ground, where it shattered into twinkling bits of glass.
I used the distraction to duck out of his grip and roll away from him.
“That cure is going to kick in any minute now,” I said smoothly. “If I were you, I’d use what speed you have left to outrun my fanged friend here. You might just make it back behind the citadel walls before you’re fully human. I wonder, if they’ll let you stay, or if they’ll ship you to one of the compounds, so some elite lord can get his weekly taste of you.”
Nigel’s jaw twitched. The others had stopped fighting to watch us. Thomas lifted his sword to cut Jazmine down, but before he could, Penelope flew like a blur and severed his outstretched arm. Before he could react, she spun around, twisting the spear behind her back, before stabbing it up through his heart.
Then she kicked his body forward towards Trevor, who pounced on it, chewing through the elite’s shoulder and ripping open his torso with a spray of blood.
“This isn’t over,” Nigel growled, grinding his teeth.
Then he took off in a blur through the ruined city, with Bryce close behind him.
15
I took a hard breath, sinking down to the concrete, my limbs shaking. The ringing in my ears and dizziness muted the shouting around me. After a few moments, my heart stopped racing, but I still jumped when I felt the bristly hairs of the slagpaw rub against me. I patted its head absently, and it whined as I scratched behind its ears.
“Shit, shit.” Luke said, kicking at the remains of Thomas. Glistening intestines wrapped around the elite’s exposed ribcage. “I can’t believe we just did that.”
“Yeah,” Jazmine said, rubbing her neck. “Thanks for all your help. Really. Couldn’t have done it without you.”
“You’re welcome. I mean, I did shoot him first, that probably weakened him.”
“You shot Bryce,” I muttered, stumbling to my feet. “He’s the one that got away. He’ll heal. And now he knows your face.”
Luke’s expression paled considerably.
I took a step closer, eyeing the remains of Jessica’s fiancé warily. I remembered the day he’d selected her from the stage in Algrave, and the radiant joy on her face at getting chosen by an elite. His blank eyes stared up at the dark sky. A burning piece of ash fell on his pale cheek, sizzling a dark hole in his skin.
“I used to play chess with that creep,” Penelope said behind me, wrapping her arms around her frail body. “I don’t know how many parties we attended together. He was always a bit of a jerk.”
I took another deep breath, held it in, and exhaled slowly. Penelope was still breathing hard, blood dripping from the long sharp stick she’d plunged into Thomas. Jazmine and Camina looked warily at her from the other side of the gas station.
She was still wearing what was left of the tattered yellow dress she’d had on during her trial and execution, though it was hard to tell under the layers of blood and filth. Her hair was a ratted mess, her eyes glowing bright in the darkness. But the way she’d moved… she was so much stronger than she had been. And now she was free.
April leaned over and vomited into the pavement, then wiped her mouth with the back of her wrist. I offered her a hand and pulled her to her feet.
“Thanks,” I said. “That was brave of you.”
“Quick thinking on your part,” she mumbled.
“Hold up,” Jazmine said. “I thought the cure didn’t work?”
“It doesn’t,” April said. “As far as we know.”
“So you were bluffing?”
“Mostly,” I said.
“Brilliant,” Jazmine said. “Only problem is, he’s going to go back and tell the king we have a cure. I think, before, branding you as a rebel was bad enough. But if you really have a cure, he’s not going to stop until he catches us. Plus, we’re murderers now. And he’ll tell them Penelope is still alive. Right?”
“I don’t know. Nigel’s not particularly loyal, but he’ll do what he needs to.”
“Still, we have to move,” Camina said. “They know where we are. They’ll track us, and be back with the king’s army.”
“I’m not going anywhere with that thing,” Luke said, crossing his arms and nodding at Penelope. She stood by herself, drenched in blood, rubbing her pale arms with cold palms.
“That thing is Penelope, she’s my friend and she’s coming with us. She’s been treated like shit and she deserves better.”
She threw me a grateful look and my heart caught in my throat. She was the only person I’d known before and after their death. Part of me had wondered how much becoming an elite had changed her. The rebels said they were violent, bloodthirsty monsters, but in that moment she was still the woman who introduced me to iced mochas in the citadel, and I’d never seen her look more vulnerable.
“What about him,” April asked, pointing at Trevor. I realized she was the only one of us not accustomed to being this close to a slagpaw in the wild. I was surprised she wasn’t screaming and running in the other direction.
“He needs elixir, to change back. Otherwise, he’ll get stuck like that. Anybody have any left?” They shook their heads.
Shit... my breath caught in my throat. I’d used the elixir Marcus had given me against the bear, and fighting off Nigel the first time. And then he’d fed on me. I tried not to think of his teeth against my neck.
Panic filled my veins. I bent down to look in the slagpaw’s red eyes. I barely had to stoop to be at eye level, he was nearly as big as a horse.
“You’re an idiot,” I said.
The slagpaw whined a response.
Trevor shifted, to save us. But if we didn’t find more elixir, fast, he could get stuck like this for good. In a few days, he’d forget who he was. In a week, he’d be a monster.
“Well,” Camina said, looking at Penelope pointedly. “I know of one place where we can get some.”
Penelope frowned, crossing her arms.
“Sure, just use me as your magic dispenser,” she said. “That’s cool.”
“She’s too weak anyway,” April said quietly. “She needs fresh blood to make more elixir. And without it, she’ll go feral again. She will kill us, she won’t be able to help it.”
I thought back to her attacking me, and a shudder ran down my spine. April w
as right, as long as Penelope was with us, we’d have to keep her fed. It felt like a complicated math problem; how to keep everyone I cared about alive, without them killing each other.
“So,” I said, “some of us will need to donate blood, voluntarily, to keep Penelope from losing control. In return, Penelope allows us to take a bit of her blood, to heal Trevor and stay strong enough to survive the next fight. Sound fair?”
Luke looked sick to his stomach. April bit her lip, but Camina’s eyes lit up at the promise of more elixir.
“It’s basically the same as the contract, the treaty,” Jazmine smiled.
“Not quite as sanitary,” Penelope said. “Feels a little awkward. But fine with me.”
I looked around our small circle, getting nods of agreement from everyone.
“Wonderful,” Penelope said, putting away her weapons. “I appreciate the gesture. I’m actually not that hungry. When Trevor let me out, we made a stop first. There was a woman, freshly killed, outside of Havoc. Trevor said it was someone you knew, and that I should eat to get my strength back.”
Beatrice. A chill ran down my spine. She’d fed on Beatrice. Luke seemed to reach the same conclusion, because his eyes widened and his fingers curled into fists.
“She had to eat,” I said quietly, stepping between them. “She was already dead.”
“As for your boy there,” she nodded towards the slagpaw, as it crunched through Thomas’s skull like a walnut, before stripping flesh from bone, “looks like he’s getting plenty of elixir on his own.”
“This is insane,” Luke grumbled, shifting the shotgun over his shoulder. “We should just kill her and be done with it. You can’t trust an elite.”
“Watch it, sewer rat,” she said, flashing her teeth, “or I’ll eat you first.”
Luke blanched, then turned to look back towards the horizon. The smoke from the explosion was only slightly darker than the falling ash.
“I can’t believe it’s gone.” April said, following his gaze towards the underground sanctuary.
