No one argues. Dellin jumps in, and I can see her eyes widen as the churning water threatens to swallow her. Brogut wraps an enormous arm around Dellin’s waist and paddles after the Zeroes. His strokes are far less graceful. He splashes and splutters as he tries to swim and keep Dellin’s head above water.
Ekil and Dayne are next. Vlaz, pacing along the river bank, whines and jumps in after them. He grasps Dayne’s cloak between his fangs, helping to keep him above water as Ekil strains against the current.
The moment my feet break the water’s surface, I’m dragged down. My clothes and boots suck me beneath the surface. Silt and pebbles swirls around me, getting inside my clothes and scratching at my skin.
Before I’ve gotten used to the roiling current, Ry is in the water. She immediately sinks, having no power to withstand the water’s downward pull. It’s only because of her flame-red hair I’m able to find her and yank her back up.
I kick out in the direction where the others disappeared, fighting the current that is trying to sweep us downriver, away from the mountain.
Kick and drag. When I turn my head to the side, I’m met with Ry’s wide, panic-stricken eyes. I lift her even farther out of the water, giving her a chance to breathe. She coughs and splutters as I kick on.
Ekil, whose trailing bubbles I’ve been following, disappears. It’s like he swam underneath the mountain itself.
“Hold your breath,” I yell to Ry. I hope she’s heard me over the roar of the water. I plunge under the surface, dragging Ry with me.
I try to follow the bubbles trailing Ekil and Dayne, but there is so much silt and muck being churned up from the bottom I can barely see. I dive deeper, silently begging Ry to hang on, as I pull her under a stone lip.
Darkness envelops us. There is no space, no breathable air, between the water and the rock overhead.
I blink, sand stinging my eyes and blurring my vision. The faint outline of movement catches my eye, and I kick toward it.
A trail of bubbles escapes from my lips as I let out a choking cough. Panic begins to squeeze around me as no light, and no end to this ledge, appears. We’ve gone too far to turn back now. Instinct tells me the fastest path to fresh air is on the other side of this ledge.
Don’t breathe. Don’t breathe. Don’t breathe.
Black spots dance across my vision. My chest aches with the need for oxygen. The rock scraping against the top of my head is a constant reminder we’re trapped. Every second is a fight…a fight to cover more distance…a fight against my body’s need to breathe….
The water’s color changes ahead. I kick forward with a frantic urgency, putting every bit of will and strength I have left into reaching the light.
With a final, desperate kick, I propel us forward. The heavy feel of the slick rock above disappears. I pull Ry’s limp body up with me as my head breaks through the surface.
My first gasp of air is all pain; my lungs seem to have forgotten how to work. I’m dimly aware of Dayne coughing and gasping beside me. I turn Ry over, and she starts to retch up river water. When two Zeroes swim out to meet us, neither Ry nor Dayne fights them as they’re pulled the rest of the way onto the rock ledge.
Vlaz, who seems to be the only one who made the swim without incident, shakes out his shaggy coat, spraying everyone already on the rocks. There’s just enough room for him to fit on the ledge so long as the rest of us stay huddled together. Vlaz’s yellow eyes are dull, and I feel a pang of guilt for the wound in his neck that is still leaking blood.
“We’ll get you fixed up,” I promise him.
Vlaz whines and gives my face a gentle lick.
My father stares down at me as I pull myself onto the slippery rock. “Welcome to the Lair.”
CHAPTER 26
My father and his Zeroes leave to get bandages for Vlaz and dry clothes for us, giving us a few minutes to ourselves.
Dayne, Ry, and I huddle together on the wet rocks, with Dellin standing a few paces away.
“Here.” I toss the rope binding Fake Hendrix’s wrists to Dellin. “You can hold him.” Every time I look at the man, I see my aunt’s body crumpling on the ground at Crowe’s feet.
“Shouldn’t we blindfold him?” Dellin asks, catching the rope.
Ry laughs. “I don’t think he’s going to be rushing back to Malarusk to report on what he’s seen.” She turns to Fake Hendrix. “What do you think?”
The Dusker hasn’t said much since we dragged him all the way here, but he meets Ry’s gaze with a defiant look. “When the darkness comes, I’ll be rewarded.”
Ry scoffs. “Duskers and their darkness.”
“Soon,” Fake Hendrix says, and it’s the first word he’s said that hasn’t been twisted with humor or mockery. It reminds me of the way the Dusker woman said the same thing back in Tanguro. It wasn’t the words themselves—a prophecy I’ve heard all my life—but the way they were said. It wasn’t a hope for the darkness. It was a promise.
We all look at the man. The water has washed all of his white paint away. His natural eye color has returned to murky brown, and looks nothing like the dazzling green they were when I first saw him.
“I think we should blindfold him anyway,” Dellin says.
When no one responds, she tears a piece of cloth from her shirt and ties it around Fake Hendrix’s eyes. I notice she stands behind him the whole time, making sure he doesn’t see her face.
Paranoid coward.
Ekil and Brogut are holding their own hushed conference as far from the rest of us as they can get. Vlaz, looking miserable, sits next to me with his head drooping.
“What do we do now?” I ask.
“We’ve got no leverage,” Ry scowls in Fake Hendrix’s direction, “so it was all for nothing.”
“If the Banished surrender to the Duskers,” Dayne says, “it’s all over for the Solguards.”
“Then we have to find a way to keep the Banished from surrendering,” I say.
“How?” Ry demands. “Give them Fake Hendrix? Re-paint his eyes and skin?”
“We don’t know which dyes they used,” Dayne says. “And Valior knows Hendrix, so he wouldn’t be fooled by anything of inferior quality.”
“We need to stall them,” I say. “The Banished leaders gave us a week. That means we still have four days to figure out something else we can give them, something that will make them think we’re strong enough to be worth fighting for.”
“And that would be exactly what?” Ry asks. “In case you haven’t noticed, we’re more or less your father’s prisoners at the moment.”
“I may have a solution to your problem.”
We all startle at the sight of Zeidan coming down the dimly lit path toward us.
“Like you’d help us,” Ry scoffs. “Are we supposed to believe you’ve become a philanthropist in your old age?”
“There’s no need for charity when our interests are aligned,” my father replies.
“They are?” My brother’s loathing is undisguised.
“You need a show of strength that will give you authority over the Banished, and the ability to withstand an attack from Malarusk,” he says.
“And what do you need?” I ask. “Like Ry said, we all know you well enough to know you don’t make an offer unless it’s to your benefit.”
My father studies me for a moment. “I want what I have always wanted—a world where you belong. A place where your strength is valued, rather than feared. A world where there are more like you.”
Ry and Dayne are muttering, but my father ignores them.
“You need me,” he says, looking only at me. “You need what I’m offering.”
Brogut, bored with all of the words he doesn’t understand, prods me with his elbow and then points a fleshy finger at my father. “We kill now?”
I bite my lip, knowing I’ll probably regret what I say next. “Not yet.”
I look at Dayne and Ry. My brother looks sick with disgust. Ry just looks beaten. Even her curls have lost thei
r vitality and are flattened to her head. And then I look up at my father. My father, who, just weeks ago, I would have given anything to track down and kill.
But everything is different now. Aunt Jadem is dead, and the Solguards are facing a massacre. Wade and Wokee and all the rest of the Solguards’ lives are at stake.
We can play your game, too, I think as I meet my father’s stare.
“What are you offering?” I ask him.
My father gives me a thin, knowing smile. “An army.”
✽✽✽
While the others change into dry clothes, Dayne works on bandaging Vlaz. The two Halves scour the riverbank for driftwood they can fashion into another spear for Brogut. After a short argument, I convince Dayne and the others to stay behind with Vlaz, who won’t be able to fit through the narrower passages inside the mountain, while I go see whatever my father wants to show me. I tell them it’s because the Zeroes are less likely to be aggressive if it’s just one of us with their master. The real reason is that if I have to see my own agony reflected on their faces for another second, I’ll fall apart.
“Bring the Dusker,” my father tells me. “I have just the place for him.”
“Be careful, Hemera,” Dayne warns, turning away from Vlaz to look at me. “Zeidan’s got a poisonous tongue. He’ll kill us the moment we’re no longer useful to him.”
“Let him try,” I say. I’m not the same girl who wandered into Tanguro all those months ago searching for her lost boyfriend.
My father crosses his arms. “I would not have rescued you from certain death if I wanted you destroyed.”
I look at my father, dressed in the same sand-colored cloak he wore when he was Captain of Subterrane Harkibel. His long beard is no longer salt-and-pepper, but completely white. But the intelligent, scheming look is still bright in his eyes. I know better than to trust a word he says.
I give Fake Hendrix a vicious tug. He squishes up the path behind me, still in his sopping wet clothes. I reach back and pull off the ridiculous blindfold Dellin insisted on. Fake Hendrix seems resigned to whatever fate he’s been dealt, and he doesn’t try to struggle as I pull him along.
I follow my father as the path turns up and away from the water. Steps are cut into the stone and lead up into the mountain.
Although it’s as dark in here as it was in Subterrane Harkibel, it doesn’t feel like the ceiling might cave in at any moment. There is no packed dirt, no wooden beams that shift under too much pressure. In here, it’s just stone and more stone. Instead of going down, deeper into the ground, we walk up and into the mountain.
Lanterns hanging from iron rods nailed into the rock give off small beams of light. The main path is wide and tall, maybe even enough for Vlaz to fit. I feel a pang of guilt at the thought of Vlaz, injured and huddled on that cold rock ledge. At least he can swim back into the sunlight whenever he pleases.
It’s still hard to believe we’re inside Dusker Peak.
“How did you build all of this?” I ask, my voice echoing off the high ceilings.
My father turns back to look at me. “I didn’t. The Zeroes did.”
The blades of the Zeroes’ scythes bob ahead, glimmering in the lantern light.
“They’re unnatural,” I say. My voice echoes off the lofty ceiling, making it sound like I shouted the words.
My father gives me a knowing look.
My cheeks heat with shame. Those words…they’re the ones the Dwellers used as their excuse for abandoning a ten-year-old girl in a cave collapse…the ones that have always been used to isolate and humiliate me….
I swallow hard. I don’t want to think about the fact that I have more in common with these Zeroes than with either Halves or humans.
When we reach what looks to be the end of the path, one of my father’s Zeroes bends to unwind a thick chain wrapped around a door’s handle. The Zero tosses the chains to the side and pushes the door open. I pause.
“More catacombs?” I had meant to sound sarcastic, rather than high-pitched and nervous.
“In a sense,” my father replies.
I’m grateful Dayne isn’t with me now. Ekil and Brogut, too. They’re still haunted by what happened in the catacombs, and the torture they—and so many others—suffered in my father’s experiments to create the Zeroes. I steel myself and follow my father inside, pulling Fake Hendrix with me.
I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t this.
We’re inside a huge chamber. The air is thick with oily smoke rising from a stubby branch of candles perched on the floor. At first, I think the stench is coming from the candles, but a closer look reveals the people chained all the way around the room’s perimeter. Not just any people—Duskers. Lots of them. Their gray cloaks are filthy, but I still recognize these prisoners for who they are. The room smells like sour air and unbathed bodies.
The Duskers strain against iron chains binding them in a line along the wall, their eyes slitted against the brightness of the lantern my father holds. Many of the prisoners are emitting strange, muffled sounds. When I look closer, I realize they’re gagged.
“There are eighty-nine of them, plus the ten I made after leaving Tanguro,” my father says. He takes the rope from my hand and loops it through an iron hook on the wall, binding Fake Hendrix along with the others. “He makes one-hundred.”
“How?” my voice is small.
“There are more benefits to the Lair besides the fact it’s impossible for humans to reach,” my father replies.
At the puzzled look I give him, he explains, “Every month, the new recruits have their initiation ritual—”
“—on Darkness Peak,” I finish.
My father nods. “It’s taken longer than I wanted, but I couldn’t risk my Zeroes taking too many at once, or the Supreme would have suspected something more than the regular hyenair and Burn vulture attacks.”
“We’ll never fight on your side,” Fake Hendrix spits, his voice hoarse from disuse. “Long live the Dusker Supreme!”
“You may find you don’t have a choice in the matter,” my father replies.
“I don’t understand.” I shake my head. “You said you had an army.”
Fake Hendrix was right about one thing. My father might have them chained to a wall, but the Duskers would never change their allegiance, no matter what they were threatened with.
My father looks at me. “I don’t have an army yet. That’s where you come in.”
“I don’t believe it.” Anger churns in my stomach. “You’re just the same liar who ran away from Tanguro with his tail between his legs.”
“Careful, daughter,” his expression darkens. “I said you could have your army. One that will give you your best chance against the Duskers. I’m offering you full control of that army.” He waits while I get my breathing under control. “But if you want all that, you will need to help create it.”
“How?” I ask, barely managing to get the word out through the hatred searing my chest. “How do I create an army from this?”
“You’ve seen the strength of ten Zeroes, and they were made with diluted blood.” He smiles. “Think of what you could do with a hundred of them made with pure blood.”
“I’m not a monster like you,” I spit. “I’m not going to torture humans and Halves like you did.”
My father gives me a pitying look, which only makes me madder. “We are more alike than you might think, daughter. We are both leaders, and leaders have the responsibility of taking action, even when there might be consequences.”
“Might be consequences?” My laughter is harsh. The sound makes the chained Duskers restless. “You tortured Halves. You killed people. You almost killed my brother!”
“And because of their sacrifices,” my father continues in his calm, cool voice, “I possess the formula for making the transition from human to Zero. No one else needs to die.”
“Except them,” I gesture at the prisoners.
“Are you really defending the killers of your f
riends at Tanguro?” my father asks, a hint of disbelief in his otherwise calm features. “The killers of your aunt?”
For the first time, I can’t come up with a reason to disagree with him. He’s right. The Duskers have taken so much from me. They’re the reason I might lose the rest. Would it be so bad to give them a taste of their own medicine? To make them the hunted rather than the hunters?
“Hemera, listen to me. You have more strength than any living being in this world. Stop waiting for someone else to come up with a solution to your problems.”
“I’m not—”
“Of course you are!” My father’s face is flushed now, his careful control slipping away. “Turn your grief into something more.” He takes a deep breath. “This war is coming. You alone have the power to decide its outcome. You can condemn us. Or you can save us all.”
My aunt said the same thing…right before she walked into Malarusk for the last time.
I think about Aunt Jadem.
What was it she said before? There is nothing more powerful than a willing sacrifice. Something tells me she didn’t have an alliance with my father in mind when she said it, but if helping my father was all that stood between the Solguards and annihilation…?
My aunt’s last moments have played over and over in my mind. I just stood there and watched, as useless as I was when my mother was killed. I’m a Bisecter, stronger than humans and Halves, and yet I couldn’t save either of the people I loved so much.
What’s the point of being this way if I can’t even protect the people I care about?
My father is right about one thing. Since the battle at Tanguro, I’ve been drowning in grief, too caught up in my failures to do anything except hide in shame.
Not anymore.
“I want to do to Crowe what she’s done to me. I want to destroy her and everything she’s built.”
CHAPTER 27
I step into the small, circular room my father has given to our company. There are enough bedrolls for Ry, Dellin, Dayne, and me, as well as Ekil and Brogut. On the far side of the room is a cloth screen blocking a small copper tub and a water spigot. A crudely built wooden table topped with clay bowls is pushed up against the wall. A branch of candles throws wild shadows along the wall. The space is small, with no natural light, of course. It makes me long for the high ceilings of the buildings at Tanguro and the sunlight-warmed Solguard fortress.
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