His grip bit into me, each finger a burning imprint. He wasn’t going to surrender. It wouldn’t be like before. He wasn’t going to dive in headfirst. There would be no embracing of death.
But we couldn’t escape them. They met us in every direction, the stench of them thick, their moist breaths ragged as they began filling the space around us. Fowler uttered a stinging curse as more dwellers dropped from above, landing with fat plops all around us. Clawed fingers scored the ground as they shoved to their feet.
He swung around, yanking me with him. I felt dizzy for a moment as he pulled me one way, then another, moving us forward in a wild zigzag pattern.
I grabbed his shoulder, but he kept going, dodging their ice-cold bodies. “Fowler! Stop!” I dug harder into his arm. “Stop!”
He finally froze, pulling me into a pocket in the wall of a tunnel, shielding me with his body, his breath falling hard against the side of my face. I faced him, savoring the sensation of his eyes on me. His breath continued to fall in savage pants. It was hopeless.
“Fowler,” I pleaded, fighting to tune out the sounds of dwellers closing in—the rasp of their sensors, the shuffle of heavy feet. We didn’t have long before they would be on us, ripping flesh and sinew from our bones. I could almost imagine the weight of them on me, crushing, killing. “I don’t want to spend my last moments running.”
“Luna,” he choked out, his hand flexing around mine. “Why did you have to come . . .”
“Shh.” I cupped his face with both hands. “You’re not the only one who gets to play knight in shining armor, you know.” My thumbs brushed the planes of his cheeks, letting go of my anger. In this moment, what was the point? “I want in on some of the fun, too.” This was easier than being angry, easier than accusing him of betrayal.
He dropped his head until our foreheads rested together. “You’re supposed to live.”
I swallowed back the impulse to tell him the truth. Me living was never going to happen. It was only a matter of time. He’d told me as much when Sivo first insisted that I leave the tower with him. This world, full of darkness and monsters and tyranny, wasn’t for the living. Fowler had tried to tell me that so many times.
Since the moment I discovered that innocent girls were dying in Cullan’s quest to destroy me, my fate was sealed. My only regret was that I wasn’t able to stop him. That he would continue killing girls because of me.
“No more running,” I whispered, trying to block out the sounds of dwellers, focusing all my senses on the boy in front of me. The heavy steps and rotting, loamy aroma of dwellers closing in. The horrible gurgling breaths. All of it vanished. “That’s not how I want my last moments to be.”
“Very well.” His head nodded in the clasp of my fingers. “No more running.” His breath fanned my lips and I lifted up on my tiptoes.
His mouth closed on mine, stealing my breath. Blood rushed to my head, precisely what I wanted—a rush of white noise in my ears to block out the army of dwellers coming at us.
His arm wrapped around my waist and hauled me closer. Everything else melted away. Fowler’s chest mashed into mine, and I even forgot the miserable sensation of my wet clothes sticking to me like a second skin.
I felt his heart pounding into my ribs. His fingers delved through my mud-tangled hair as he kissed me, lips devouring me in precisely the way I wanted, in the way I needed, in a way that made me forget his lies and my shattered heart and the monsters bearing down on us.
FOUR
Fowler
I KISSED HER harder than I ever had before. It was no gentle meeting of lips over hushed endearments. Nothing slow or leisurely. I claimed her mouth, determined that it be everything. Everything a last kiss should be.
The kiss burned and left its mark, burrowing past flesh and tissue to the very marrow of us—to all that would be left. It imprinted on our souls. When the dwellers tore us apart this kiss would still remain.
I slanted my lips over hers, going deeper, my hands gripping her, ignoring the pain that throbbed in my one arm . . . ignoring the dwellers moving in, so close. I kept my eyes closed, losing myself in her taste and texture. One of her hands curved around my head, molding to the shape of my scalp, and I felt her pulse in the press of her palm on me. Luna’s life merged into mine.
My mind reeled, thinking of the first time I saw her, shooting an arrow at a dweller, saving my life—a bold girl who moved as though she belonged to the woods. As though she belonged to this world, as natural as the darkness itself. I’d resisted her, fought the attraction, but now I knew. She was not something I could resist. It was what she asked for, even if not in so many words. No more running.
I inhaled cold air through my nose and dove deep into the taste of her, pushing my fingers into her mud-caked hair.
A sudden scream blasted over the air, long and eerie as nails scraping glass. It jarred us apart. The sound resembled a horn or trumpet, except no instrument had ever created this. It was animal-like and loud enough to make ears bleed, blaring long and deep, tinged with impatience.
With a cry, Luna staggered, colliding into the earthen wall. I held on to her arm as she flung her hands over her ears. The dwellers stopped cold. The nest of sensors in the center of their blocky faces writhed, the only movement made. Dozens of them hovered on every side of us, locked in some kind of frozen spell. One was so close, it only needed to lift an arm and stretch its taloned fingers to reach me. This close, I could make out the dark stain of blood on the tips of those thick talons, bits of human flesh and gore stuck there like meat on a bone.
As abruptly as it started, the screeching stopped. The dwellers still didn’t move. I held my breath, assuming they would lurch back into action. I eyed the one nearest me cautiously. Its mouth gaped, sensors dripping with glistening toxin, but it still made no advance.
I tightened my grip on Luna. “Come,” I whispered.
Her hands dropped from her ears as I pulled her back to my side. She exhaled, and I felt that breath shudder through me.
“Fowler?” she asked, her voice shaky. “What’s happening? Why aren’t they moving?”
I knew her well enough to know that even without vision, Luna behaved as though she could see. There were very few instances where one was alerted to the fact that she was blind.
I eyed the army of dwellers all around us and opened my mouth to reply, but that savage scream started again with renewed force.
I winced, and Luna covered her ears again. I could just barely make out her eyes in the near darkness, jammed tightly shut as she covered her ears, as if that would somehow help ward off the sound. I shook my head, but the action only seemed to bring more stabbing pain to my ears.
The dwellers turned almost as one body, still ignoring us. Several passed us, their cold, pasty bodies brushing against us with slow drags. It was almost unbearable, being this close to them. Feeling them, smelling their stink. My throat tightened as one passed, a chunk of its hairless skull missing, someone’s hatchet still embedded there.
They moved in the same direction, walking away from Luna at the briskest pace I had ever seen them move. I didn’t know they could even move at that speed. Most of the time they doddered, and this was the salvation of many lives.
“They’re leaving.” Bewildered, I held her close as dwellers passed, parting like a tide around us. We stood holding each other, two pebbles undisturbed in their path. It was like they didn’t even see us anymore. We were invisible . . . unimportant.
Whatever that scream was, wherever it came from, it was manipulating them. I watched for a paralyzed moment as they shuffled along, fading away and leaving us alone in the narrow tunnel. The deafening scream continued, punctuated with brief pauses, and I wondered if it was their language, or a code dwellers alone understood. I had long thought they communicated with each other through their shrill cries . . . and this scream was the mother of all that I had ever heard in the years that I journeyed the Outside.
It was only supposition. I d
idn’t know what was happening, and I didn’t know how long it would last. It couldn’t last long.
Luna stretched up on tiptoes to speak in my ear. “They’re following the scream.” She pressed a hand against the earthen wall, her slim fingers splayed wide as if requiring the balance. “And it’s more than that. There are vibrations, too. I can feel them in the earth. In the air.” She lifted her chin as if she was detecting those sound waves now. Her next words confirmed what I suspected. The chill of my skin wasn’t only from the cold. A sick dread took hold of me—a suspicion that there was something down here bigger, more powerful, than any single dweller. Something strong enough to control an army of dwellers. Whatever that something was, we needed to remove ourselves from it.
“There’s something else down here. It’s controlling them,” Luna finished.
I shook my head as though it didn’t matter. I slid my hand down her arm to seize her hand. By some miracle we had our chance, and we needed to take it before the window of opportunity disappeared. “Let’s go.”
I led us. She pulled on my arm at one point when I tried to take a right turn. “This way,” she instructed, guiding me.
Of course, she would know the way out. I followed her. Luna never forgot a path taken. I hardly remembered being dragged down here. It was all a blur of sound and pain.
She stopped at a slippery slope and started to climb upward, stabbing her knife in the slick wall and using it for leverage. I came up behind her and gave her a boost. It was slow progress. For every two feet she advanced, she slid back down one. I grunted, fighting the pull of weariness, shoving her up, struggling to keep her moving. I was so damnably weak.
She wiggled higher, taking the momentum of me pushing to claw up the incline until I couldn’t see her head and shoulders anymore.
I started after her, ignoring the ache in my muscles and the burn in my arm. Freedom was close. I heard her suck in a deep breath and surge up through the quagmire above our heads. Her legs disappeared, followed by her feet, until she slipped totally out of sight, vanishing into the marsh above.
I followed, dragging a deep breath inside my lungs, filling them to capacity before I plunged into the icy muck. I kicked and used my arms, assisting gravity in bringing me to the surface, where the water was a few degrees warmer at least.
I broke clear with a gasp, tossing my head and filling my aching lungs, pulling sweet air inside me.
Lifting my face, I let the paltry rays of midlight wash over my face.
“Fowler! This way!” Luna was there, hauling herself out of the bog. She turned back over her shoulder to call for me.
“Here,” I said, scarcely recognizing the hoarseness of my voice.
I swam through the dense bog, forcing my leaden limbs to move. My strength was dwindling. I hefted myself up, pulling my legs free. For a moment, I collapsed on the sodden ground, resting, facedown and panting with labored breaths.
We made it. We were alive.
“Fowler.” She breathed my name somewhere above my head. “We can’t stay here.”
I pushed up onto my trembling legs, knowing she was right and trying not to collapse on the spot. Not after all she did to rescue me. I had to keep going. “Of course.”
The hour would end and darkness would descend again. With it dwellers would return. We couldn’t count on that thing that had called them down there to hold them at bay from us forever. “We’ll find shelter.” She nodded as though this would be a simple matter. “This way.”
We tromped through the marsh side by side, avoiding where the water was the deepest. I fixed my gaze on Luna, focusing on her and not the excruciating discomfort pounding through my body.
She was a mess. Her shorn, muddied hair jutted about her head like black straw. The milk of her skin was nowhere to be seen. Not an inch of her was spared mud and that greenish sap from the dwellers’ nest.
She was the most beautiful thing I ever set eyes on.
“You saved me,” I uttered, a fair amount of awe creeping into my voice. I doubted anyone ever went belowground and returned to tell of it.
“A fair exchange. You saved me first by jumping from the tree and letting them take you so that they forgot about me.” Her strides struck harder and she almost overtook me. I increased my pace to stay abreast with her. “Fool thing to do! What were you thinking?”
“I was thinking of you. There was no sense in both of us dying. Which is exactly what would have happened if I didn’t jump from that tree when I did.”
The ground grew more solid beneath our feet. Rocky and uneven. I scanned the hazy landscape, spotting rises and outcroppings ahead. Maybe we could find cover there.
“So you thought to make a grand sacrifice?” she snapped. “No one asked you to do that! I didn’t ask it of you! I don’t want anyone to die for me. Not even you.”
“Oh, but it’s a familiar concept, is it not?” I shot back, letting her feel my full temper. Gone was the moment of that kiss when we pushed aside every anger and betrayal. We were alive and safe for now, and our differences resurfaced with nowhere to hide. “Senselessly sacrificing yourself for others is something you’re only too willing to do?”
Her body stiffened. “It’s not senseless,” she whispered.
“Let’s consider that. Returning to Relhok and throwing yourself at the feet of Cullan so that he might lift his kill order on girls? How is that any different from me sacrificing myself for you?”
She paused for a moment and turned her face in my direction, her expression startled before she masked it and continued walking, her boots biting into the ground with her ire. “It’s not the same. Not the same at all.”
“It is,” I insisted over ragged breaths, struggling to keep up. I swallowed, fighting for stamina, cursing this maddening weakness that sucked and pulled at me.
“Very well then,” she snapped. “If it’s the same, then you understand about necessary sacrifices. You should understand why I need to go to Relhok City. Why I have to stop Cullan.” She halted, and I tried not to sigh my relief. Her pace was killing me.
I flexed my fingers, willing sensation back into my hand . . . sensation other than searing agony. She faced me as though she could see me, her liquid dark eyes flitting over me unseeingly. It was eerie the way I always felt exposed around her. Maybe now more than ever. I had nothing left to hide. No secrets to keep from her. This was just me standing before her.
“Cullan,” she repeated. “You know. Your father.”
The accusation was clear. Apparently we would have this conversation now. I inhaled a pained breath. “Luna, let’s not—”
“Why not? It’s the truth. He’s a tyrant. Brutal. Evil.”
All truths I would rather not waste precious time discussing. “He’s no father to me—”
“Except he is your father. A convenient bit of truth you kept to yourself.” She nodded as though willing that bitter fact to sink in and take root.
I stared at her for a long moment, futile words welling up inside me that would mean nothing to her. The only thing she felt was betrayal. My betrayal. It was too raw. Nothing I said would change that. At least not yet. It would take time. Time I didn’t have. Wincing, I shifted my arm. I couldn’t move my fingers anymore.
“You left me, Luna. You ran from me so that you could go after Cullan,” I reminded her in a hoarse whisper, determined to make her remember, make her care again. Only then could I sway her from the path she had chosen for herself. “Do you have any idea what that did to me? Waking up and finding you gone?”
“Don’t do that. He’s your father. Don’t call him Cullan like he’s not.”
“Who my father is doesn’t erase what we have.”
“Had,” she cut in, her voice quiet. “Had, Fowler. We don’t have that anymore. It’s finished. There are more important things. Matters of the heart are immaterial. You taught me that. Remember? Everyone dies. No one lasts in this world, and it’s pointless growing attached to anyone.”
�
�Luna, I didn’t—”
She swung around and kept moving, her pace swift. I fell in next to her, holding my burning arm close to my side.
I nodded to the outcropping not far to the right of us. “Rocks ahead. Let’s rest.”
“We should keep going.”
“I need to rest.” I hated that I had to say the words. In all our time together, I usually forged our path. I never complained of tiredness or weakness. It stung my pride that I had to do it now.
She sent me a peculiar look, clearly thinking the same thing, too. “Very well.”
We made our way to the rocks. I clambered up the incline ahead of her, grunting cold gusts of breath. At the top, I noticed a crevice between two rocks. I reached for her hand, briefly grabbing hold of her fingers with my good hand before she pulled away. The rejection stung. She wouldn’t even let me have that much of her.
Her chin shot up and she shook mud-stiffened hair back from her pale face. “I can manage.”
Shrugging like it didn’t bother me, as though I didn’t feel her distance from me like a physical ache, I squeezed through the opening into the chilled space, relieved that it widened to a larger area. The area was wide enough for us both to stand with arms outstretched. I collapsed onto the cold stone, the chill at my back a welcome contrast to the fire in my arm.
She lowered herself down on the ground, keeping her distance and folding her hands on her bent knees. The closeness we’d had underground—that kiss—felt like a lifetime ago. Not forgotten, but buried deep with the dwellers and bones of the dead. I settled on my back and let my head drop back on the solid ground with a dull thud.
Now that we had escaped, my body let every pain, big and small, assert itself. I closed my eyes, not even caring that I slept on rigid stone. I ached—and not just my arm. My head throbbed, flushing with heat. My arm burned so much that I began to wonder if it wouldn’t feel better simply severed from my torso. I chuckled lightly at the morbid thought. There had been days when I thought death might be better, easier than this existence. Then I had met Luna and she convinced me that life could be more. That together we could have more. Now she had decided she had been wrong.
Rise of Fire Page 2