The Claiming

by Imogen Keeper

  She counted out the time. Estimated how long it would take. He should see the tracker by now. Any second.

  She took a long pull on the wine. It tasted like shit. A few days in the heat had done nothing to strengthen this vintage. She poured a little more on the knife to clean it.

  And then it happened.

  There was a burst of light in front of Manivietto’s dome, a flash as a hover turned on, lifted into the sky.

  Tessa smiled.

  Follow the tracker, brother.

  Manivietto, like Tessa, was a control freak. He’d never pass up the chance to do this himself.

  She took a final sip of the wine, set the timers on the explosives, and picked up the knife again.

  The ground shifted under her feet, and a second later a boom rattled in her ears, and sent her ducking for the ground, certain it was her bomb. But it wasn’t.

  She looked around, watching as the city around her shuddered and heaved, the buildings rising and following as if they sat atop a blanket, and someone were shaking it. Dust fluttered from the walls of the aerie as Manivietto’s hover trundled across the night, closing in the space between them.

  39

  the dot stopped

  BRIELLA was on her knees again. He seemed to like having her around more and more, but liked actually having sex with her less and less.

  So, he kept her under his desk, slobbering on his cock for hours. He’d pet her hair and tell her she was beautiful. Her jaw ached, her knees hurt all the time, but there were worse things than having a flaccid cock in one’s mouth. At least, he’d stopped messing with her mind. He was busy anyway, preparing for a big vote with the Alliance, always working, working, working.

  His hand froze on her head. “Look up, slave.”

  She did, making sure her eyes were empty except for devotion. It was easy to fake. A flap of the lashes, a softening of the eyes until she felt all gooey inside and that showed on her face.

  The hard part was not flinching when she saw his unusually beautiful face. It didn’t match his Prime physique. Maybe it bothered him, having such fine, elegant, feminine features, on such a big Prime frame. Maybe that was why he liked slaves and his wives best, women he could cow and bully into submission.

  He touched her cheek. “You are beautiful with a dick in your mouth.”

  Compliments, compliments. She forced a smile, which wasn’t easy with her mouth full.

  Something moved in his eyes. She’d never grown used to the full-black of the Vestige eyes, but she’d learned to read them. And now, he was looking down at her with…something she didn’t trust, because it looked insanely like love.

  His hands gripped her skull, thumbs digging into her cheeks, long fingers looping around, as he pushed her deeper toward his groin, his cock thickening in her throat.

  She resigned herself, braced her hands against the sides of his chair, and tried to open her throat. Her forehead pressed into his belly, her throat got full, and…he froze.

  “Tessa?”

  Huh? That was his sister’s name. Was he thinking about his sister? Gross.

  “Tessa!” He shouted it.

  There was a shout down the hall, female voices raised.

  She tried to suppress it but her gag reflex took over and she tugged away, earning herself a slap to the side of her head. It was a glancing blow that mostly got her ear and left it ringing. He kicked her with his big fancy-soled leather shoes, and dropped his togata in place.

  Briella crawled to the edge of the desk, cupping her hand to her ear, as Manivietto punched the button on his comm. “She’s moving. She’s above ground.”

  Quinton’s voice sounded, soft and tinny.

  “She’s in the fifth arondi. Moving north…no…wait. The dot’s stopped. She’s stopped. I’ll meet you there.”

  He stood up, already heading toward the door, where his mother and sister huddled, hands covering their mouths.

  He shoved past them.

  “Wait, Manivietto,” said the younger one. “Please, don’t hurt her.”

  He sneered at her. “Why would I hurt her? She’s the key to breaking the Boss.”

  40

  Silence as heavy as a mountain

  SANGER HUNCHED DOWN into a loose squat. Shane did the same behind him, as did the twenty warriors they’d brought with them. Freysa was already crouched down, nearly imperceptible. She moved like smoke.

  Behind them, the other soldiers were nearly invisible, their clothes black, their faces blacked-out with paint. Only the sheen of their guns under the unfortunately-bright moonlight, and the tapetum lucidem of their eyes could be seen, gleaming silver and blue. Like liquid orbs winking on and off as they blinked. None of them made a sound. Silence hung around them, as heavy as a mountain.

  Manivietto’s home was ten yards ahead, uphill. Tessa’s instructions had been flawless.

  This was it. They’d activated the timers on the explosives from their base in the bunkers. Every last one of them.

  A hundred bombs in strategic places across the city.

  And when they went, the warriors around him would move into place beside him, following Tessa’s notes. They’d access Manivietto’s compound, subdue his personal guard, execute the bastard and this would all be over.

  He glanced at his wrist.

  One minute to go-time. His soldiers were all in place, across the whole country, ready and waiting to invade municipal centers, the homes of Polizei headquarters. If everything went right, there would barely be any blood. Just an overwhelming show of force that would devastate the power seat of Didgermmion. Once Manivietto was dead, there would be no-one to stop them. The Alliance would lose its most powerful member. It too would topple. The war with Argentus would be over.

  He met Shane’s eye. As soon as the bombs started, Tor would be fly his own soldiers in, and Argentus would be able to breach Vestan airspace in the ensuing panic and confusion.

  A hover door slammed above them. Then a second. And a third. A moment later, lights turned on, so bright he had to shield his eyes which had grown accustomed to the dark.

  The hover slid into the sky with a steady thrum, gliding into the night.

  He glanced at his watch again.

  “Three. Two. One. Boom,” Shane whispered into the humid, silent night.

  Right on time, there was a massive boom, the earth shook and rumbled. What there wasn’t was fire. No light. No bonfire to light up the night. No signal to invade.

  Stones scuttled down the hillside around them. Trees swayed.

  Fuck.

  He braced a hand on the shaking ground. The bombs had been moved?

  “What the fuck?” Shane hissed.

  Sanger looked at Freysa. Her eyes were wide in her face, her mouth slack. “I swear I put them in place. Exactly as you told me.”

  “They moved them to the tunnels,” Sanger whispered, barely able to breathe. It was the only thing that made sense. Tessa was down there. “Someone must have followed you.”

  The shaking stopped as quickly as it had started, but Sanger’s heart didn’t stop its dread-filled lurching. Tessa was in those tunnels. Three levels down. How deeply had Manivietto’s men moved the bombs? He closed his eyes, seeing her body crushed, bleeding, broken.

  “What’s the plan, now?” Shane asked, not unkindly.

  He wanted to stand up, run down the mountain straight to the nearest access point and find her, but he couldn’t. It would change nothing. If she was dead, so was he. He wasn’t doing this again.

  The bombs, the signal for invasion were a bust. But it didn’t mean the whole mission had to fail.

  “We proceed with our side of the plan,” he whispered, his voice sounding as dead as his heart. “Nothing has changed on our end. We go in, kill Manivietto and silence anyone else before they can call for help. Then we light this dome on fire. That can be our signal.”

  A familiar robotic ice settled across him.

  “Move.” They crept up the hill.

  The
house was silent.

  They climbed over a garden wall, through a maze of bushes, trees, flowers and fountains. They met almost no resistance, as they walked through the house. Servants froze when they saw them, held their arms up high, lowered down to the ground.

  A handful of guards came out, guns cocked and ready, but they took one look at Sanger and the army behind him and lowered their guns.

  Sanger recognized them all. Not personally, but the look in their eyes, the resignation, the lack of surprise, the apathy of them all. It was the look he imagined on his own face. Dead-people walking.

  A naked woman with white hair cowered on the floor in one corner.

  Two other women, not naked, stood in front of a screen where a green dot blinked on and off. On and off. One of them was younger, familiar-looking in the slash of her brows. Her hands were cupped over her face.

  Sanger found himself leaning against a wall. Every time he shut his eyes he saw Tessa, naked, bleeding. He couldn’t focus. His brain kept jittering from one image to the next. He had to keep reminding himself of his mission, why it mattered.

  Because nothing mattered. Nothing but Tessa. Broken. Bleeding.

  “Where’s Manivietto?” Shane asked, leveling his weapon their way.

  They ignored him. So, Shane repeated himself.

  It was the naked woman who answered, sending Shane a numb look. “He’s gone in the hover.”

  She spoke with a strong Argenti accent, like Tor’s wife.

  “Why?”

  “To go get her.”

  “Who?”

  “The green dot.” She shrugged and took to her feet, her arm outstretched.

  “The green dot?” he whispered.

  “A tracker.”

  And that was when his heart started to beat again.

  “Tessa.” Not in the fucking tunnels. Not broken. Not bleeding. Not exploded in the place he’d forced her to stay.

  The weight in his chest shifted.

  No. She wasn’t where he’d left her. She was where she’d taken herself, because he wouldn’t listen to her.

  He jogged across the room, toward the window with its view of the city, the bright lights of the hover flying across the sky.

  Back to the unmoving green dot on the screen.

  He could practically see her face. The hallowed cheeks. The full upper lip. The slashing brows. The sneaky smile.

  Move, Tessa. Fucking move.

  “The aerie,” whispered the one who looked like Tessa, her hand at her throat.

  The women crossed to stand beside him, the old one, the young one who looked like Tessa. The naked one pulled on a string of rags, eying them all like any moment any one of them might attack her.

  They all watched as the hover landed on a highrise in the fifth arondi.

  He started running, Shane and Freysa on his heals, the women too, and all his men. They found hovers there.

  She wasn’t dead.

  Not yet anyway.

  He yanked on a cold metallic hover door. Piled in. The vehicle wasn’t big. It was only designed to fit ten people, but they crowded in, fast, a tangled discombobulation of splayed limbs. Somehow the naked woman had come too.

  “He’s excited,” she said, staring sightlessly in front of her, as if compelled, motivated by some invisible tether to get closer to Manivietto. “I can feel him.”

  Sanger lifted off with the doors barely half shut, one of his soldiers hanging half in and half out of the door.

  Move, Tessa. Get the fuck out of there.

  What was her plan? Stab him? Had she gotten ahold of a gun somehow?

  Vaniiya, she was going to get herself killed. His heart still hadn’t adapted to the fact that she wasn’t dead in the tunnels.

  She was alive.

  He’d get there in time to keep Manivietto from touching her.

  It would be fine.

  It had to be fine.

  He wasn’t going through this again. He refused to loose another woman he loved to Manivietto.

  They were only a hundred yards from the building.

  He could make out the roof above the little area they’d slept in.

  He could see the light of a single flame burning.

  “He’s angry,” said the half-naked woman, her eyes wide and white and terrified in her small face.

  He looked back at the candle, leaning forward, saw a figure moving, caught a fleeting glimpse of dark hair.

  And then he couldn’t see anything at all, because it exploded. A mushroom cloud of blinding light.

  41

  nothing but dust and smoke

  HANDS WRAPPED tight around the controls, Sanger froze. His whole body just stopped, glued in place, unable to look away from the aftermath of the explosion. The building was gone.

  Twenty seconds ago, there was a high rise.

  Fifteen seconds ago, a mushroom cloud of orange and yellow light.

  Five seconds ago, a mess of smoke.

  And now, slowly emerging from that tangle of smog, nothing but a pile of rubble.

  Tessa.

  Fuck, he kept seeing images of her broken and bleeding interspersed with her on her knees, naked in the bed before him.

  She’d told him she loved him.

  The hover nosedived.

  He couldn’t make his hands move.

  Couldn’t bring himself to care.

  He hadn’t said it back.

  Shane wrapped a hand around the control, shouting something, but Sanger couldn’t hear.

  Tessa.

  She must have known, planned it, all along.

  He couldn’t hear anything. Ringing ears. Blurring vision. A mess of dark and light, color crushed out by soul-crushing pain. The ground slammed upward.

  She had to have known.

  Roaring. The pavement was close. Only a few feet in front of them. They’d collide. Everyone would die.

  Freysa. Shane.

  People who didn’t deserve to die. Not like him.

  He lurched to move, but Shane had already rectified the dive. They pulled a right-angle turn, got their wheels down, thrusters working overdrive, and somehow managed to hit the ground with nothing more than a lurch.

  Everyone else sat immobile, staring at each other with stupid vapid faces. And finally, Sanger’s body unfroze. He threw open the door, hit the pavement running, and didn’t stop until he got to the building.

  A smoking, dusty jumble of rubble.

  Vaniiya, Tessa was in there somewhere. Under that somewhere.

  He had to…find her.

  Whatever it took.

  He’d probably be too late to save her, but at lease he could see her again.

  She must have been planning this since she snuck out of the tunnels.

  It was just like last time. Plaia and the babies. Only this time instead of blood there was nothing but dust and smoke.

  And Tessa. This time it was Tessa, the memory of her so close he could touch.

  He started digging.

  Lifting up chunks and bricks, working his body so he’d shut off his mind.

  A few minutes later, Shane was there too, digging. And Freysa, making piles of rubble. The old lady and the young one, Tessa’s mom and sister, both of them making inhuman wailing sounds.

  He was vaguely aware of lights in the sky, ships landing, warriors, both from Tor’s country of Tamminia and from Argentus, they ran down streets in rows and pairs, shouting behind him.

  Tessa’s bomb had been the signal, the bonfire that lit the night. Her life to stop a war.

  His wrist kept buzzing.

  Men joined him. His own. Argenti. Tamminian. Locals from Didgermmion. Spraying water on the smoking heap, moving rubble out of the way. Everyone’s faces turned dark with smoke and soot.

  A whole army. Two whole armies. Three.

  At some point someone forced him to stop, drink water. He did, with shaking, bleeding hands.

  It took hours, but there were thousands of people working together. Maybe more. Tor s
howed up, hair in a knot, a bloody gash across his face. He worked beside him for a long time. Hours maybe. Silent. Unyielding. Until the pile was half gone.

  People moved in and out around him. The sister—Leyla—still making that horrible howling cry. The mother. The woman in rags was there, her white hair darkened by soot and smoke and dirt.

  “You need to stop.” Tor shoved his shoulder into a broken board and managed to walk it vertical.

  Sanger helped him pick it up.

  “You’re going to kill yourself.”

  Maybe. Hopefully. Sanger squatted down, got his bleeding fingertips under a chunk of concrete, and with muscles straining, hefted it up.

  Tor grabbed it from him, grunted and carried it over to a pile of sorted rubble. When he came back, Sanger was pushing his weight against a piece the size of him.

  Tor grabbed Sanger’s arm, yanked him around. “You need to quit, man. Stop. She’s not here, and if she is…”

  Sanger stared at his brother. The blood on his face had crusted over. He’d stripped down at some point to just his pants. Sweat was dripping down his body, leaving marks like tear-tracks through the dust.

  Whatever Tor saw on Sanger’s face, he stopped and went back to work.

  They labored side-by -ide, until a slanted streak of blaring white crested the horizon, splitting the firmament wide open like a second explosion, followed by the orange curve of the sun.

  Someone shouted. Then another. “Got something.”

  Sanger stiffened. Tor did too.

  As one, they took off running. Sanger tripped over rubble, slipping and falling twice in his haste.

  A body, dust-covered, darkened by smoke, nearly indistinguishable from the rubble all around, lay half under a cement shelf, insulated from the crash by the diagonal piece that formed a den.

  Sanger stepped on a flat section that crumbled under his foot and went down hard, landing on his ass, crawled across the rubble.

  Several people stood around the body, squatting, shaking their heads. When they saw him, they backed away. Tor lingered several yards back, giving him space.

  Eyes blurry from dust, Sanger squinted, saw slashing brows, full lips, dark hair, but the body was way too big.