Nerve

by Kirsten Krueger

  Now, bow.

  The reaction was instantaneous. All of Periculand instantly wanted to bow before Olalla—their queen. Tray, Lavisa, Ackerly, Kiki—even Hartman, though on the ground, lowered his head in servitude. Only Ashna and the two holding her remained upright—and Eliana.

  Bow, a voice hissed at her, but it wasn’t Olalla’s this time; it was Jerry Watkins.

  Though he hadn’t succumbed mentally, he knelt along with the rest, and Eliana scrambled to join them. The last thing she wanted to do was show Olalla respect, but even more than that, she didn’t want the woman to realize this small grain of power the mind readers held over her. The two were immune to Olalla, and while it seemed useless now, they needed every bit of leverage they could obtain.

  Eliana wasn’t a prophet like Kiki, but she knew this immunity could potentially lead to a cure, and for her friends, she would find one.

  For Kiki, whose pinkish hair was mangled, whose pretty face was to the pavement, whose feelings Eliana had shattered and now desperately needed to mend, she would find one.

  39

  The Fire External

  As the Wackos trekked through the scorched entrance of Periculand, the only positive thought to cross Jamad’s mind was that Danny had been too distracted by the unexpected turn of events to notice his dog was injured. The mood Olalla Cosmos had left him in was highly unstable; even the slightest trigger would set him off. So Jamad clutched Shards tightly to his chest and prayed his leader wouldn’t glance back at them.

  Lavisa’s kick hadn’t killed the dog, but it had cracked a few ribs, and Shards whined softly at the pain. Although the slices and bruises he’d earned had him limping, Jamad tried his hardest to blend in among the Wackos—to not look as distraught, confused, and scared as he felt. Despite Danny’s notorious invincibility, they departed Periculand without his sister, and Jamad knew someone would pay for it. He hoped Danny’s wrath was reserved for the woman who’d urged their departure with her powers of manipulation.

  As far as Jamad could tell, though, the manipulation that swayed them into leaving hadn’t been supernatural. He’d heard the woman’s voice warbling through his brain, but it hadn’t affected him, and as they approached the herd of black vans, he recited every truth in his head.

  Olalla had convinced that Regg to kill himself. Olalla had forced all of Periculand into her submission. Olalla, with the same Affinity that had taken Hastings’s life, had now seized the town—Jamad’s town.

  Even as they abandoned it, half in ruins, half aflame, Jamad still saw it as his town—his home. He hated leaving it almost as much as he’d hated arriving here with the task of destroying it. At Headquarters, the concept of invading Periculand had seemed the perfect test: if he could demolish this home, he could demolish any home, including his parents’. As soon as the thin white line that was the Residence Tower had appeared on the horizon, however, he’d gone cold with how wrong this was.

  He inhaled the frigid night air and then sighed. They would return to Headquarters now, and Jamad would have to live with what he’d done. It was a choice he’d made, to stay with the Wackos, and there was no turning back now. Avner and Maddy were too far away, physically and emotionally, for him to ever join them again.

  What bothered him about their escape from the compound had not been that they’d wanted to ditch the Wackos. Hell, at this point, Jamad wanted to ditch the Wackos. The problem had been the way in which they’d chosen to escape—without him.

  Maddy hadn’t conferred with Jamad about the possibility of rescuing Avner. She’d waited until he was safely out of the picture. His two friends would have been perfectly content to leave him with the Wackos. Only because he’d obstructed their path had they invited him along. Otherwise, they would have abandoned him.

  That was what had enraged him.

  Avner was wrong about a lot of things, but he was also right about a lot of things. The Reggs—specifically the Regg researchers—deserved punishment, and the Wackos would give them that. But the Wackos were terrorists—or, at least, destroyers. Jamad couldn’t stand behind Avner’s self-righteous quest for peace, nor could he support the Wackos in their unnecessary aggression, meaning he was stuck in this unpleasant limbo, wedged between two contrasting sides, unable to fully commit to either.

  What would Zeela have done? Would she have taken Danny’s deal, or would she have rotted away with her boyfriend, only to escape and leave Jamad behind? He wanted to believe she would have sided with him, especially after how the Reggs had treated her, but he didn’t know, and it gnawed at him as much as the mystery of her whereabouts. Her destination should have been Periculand, but she hadn’t been there, which meant she could be anywhere—which meant she could be…dead.

  “Are you crying?” Naretha demanded. Stumbling, Jamad halted his strides beside their van, the one they’d taken here alone after the incident in the weapons room—the one he’d hidden in until stupid little Shards insisted on joining the battle.

  “What—no, no, I just—the wind—it’s burning my eyes—”

  Naretha’s flat, impatient look quelled his stammering. “I wasn’t aware cold wind had any effect on you. Good to know your Affinity is as useless as you are.”

  “I’m not useless…”

  “Your one job was to keep the rat safe, and you couldn’t even manage that.” It wasn’t until her narrowed eyes landed on Shards that Jamad realized “the rat” was actually the dog. “If Danny asks, we blame it on Jez. From what I observed, he didn’t make it out of Periculand, which means he probably never will. There have been enough casualties tonight. I don’t want to add your name to the list.”

  Jamad’s eyebrows rose slowly as he cocked his head. “You…don’t? That’s a surprise.”

  Naretha yanked the driver’s door open, impeding his opportunity to gloat. “Get in.”

  Hurrying to the other side of the vehicle, Jamad heeded her command, partially because he knew her attitude was mild for the amount of indignation that must have festered inside, and partially because he couldn’t stand to look at the flickering orange landscape any longer.

  Putting on his seatbelt with Shards in his lap proved a difficult feat, but he accomplished it—right before the back doors flew open.

  The van bounced and jostled as the Wacko leader hopped in and crept forward to kneel on the floor behind them, settling between their seats. Jamad tried not to look too guilty when Danny’s eyes settled on his broken dog.

  “Is he dead?” The apathy in his tone was unsettling to Jamad, and Naretha attempted to expel her nerves by turning on the vehicle.

  “N-no—”

  “Good,” was all Danny said as he averted his gaze toward the town he’d razed. “All is well, then. This worked out better than I ever could have imagined.”

  Naretha was about to shift the van into reverse, but his statement stopped her. “How so?”

  Danny made no effort to hide his aura of superiority. “Well, with Cosmos in charge, my sister will be even more eager to escape Periculand than she was to escape the compound.”

  “And you think she’ll come running back to us?”

  “Where else would she go? You must know she’s going to return and try to usurp my position. There are Wackos in our ranks who are loyal to her. You must be shrewd enough to sense it, darling.”

  Naretha ground her teeth together to keep her mouth shut. At first, Jamad assumed she’d grown tired of his pet names, but then it dawned on him that she might have been one of those Wackos loyal to Ashna.

  Either way, Danny disregarded her muteness and plunged on with the details of his plan. “If Ashna doesn’t escape—well, I have the perfect object with which to trade for her waiting back at Headquarters.”

  Blanching, Naretha opened her mouth but didn’t muster a reply.

  “Olalla seems powerful enough,” Jamad said carefully. “Is it really a good idea to give her anything she could use as a weapon?”

  “Oh, this can hardly be considered a w
eapon,” Danny retorted, his voice dancing with manic mirth. “He lacks the hunger for violence.”

  Shards nearly toppled from Jamad’s lap when the realization hit him. Still, he wouldn’t believe it without verbal confirmation, so he choked out a strangled, “He?”

  “Your old friend Avner, of course,” Danny affirmed, draining the air from Jamad’s lungs.

  “Wh-why would Olalla want Avner?”

  “You didn’t notice the resemblance? For someone who was so close with Olalla’s son, I would have thought it blatant.”

  There was no hope in replenishing his empty lungs now. Of course he hadn’t noticed the resemblance between Olalla and Avner—he’d never looked for it. Apparently, neither had Avner, for he’d never expressed any thoughts on the woman beyond her being a positive vice-presidential candidate for the Affinities. Now the notion that Olalla was anything positive had been quashed, while the notion that she was Avner’s mother was unearthed.

  The familial connection alone would have been jarring, but coupling it with the fact that Danny wanted to use Avner—who had escaped—for a trade had rendered Jamad speechless.

  “Oh, those pesky Stromers.” The man’s tone was light, but his scowl was set darkly on Periculand. “I’ll be glad to exchange Avner for my sister. Once the Stromer family’s together, I can incinerate them all at once. How delightful.”

  Jamad echoed a throaty, “Delightful.” Naretha remained silent. When she finally did shift the van into reverse, her movements were gradual, as if she wanted to prolong their journey back to Headquarters to avoid the calamity of their return. Jamad didn’t know if there were any cameras in the weapons room, but he knew they’d be dead meat if there were.

  Though it had been unspoken, he and Naretha had, in the end, agreed to let Avner, Maddy, and Zach escape. Either one of them could have killed all three, but they’d chosen not to. Danny would know this, and he would know they’d kept the entire breakout a secret to him. Naretha didn’t seem inclined to tell him now, and Jamad didn’t want to be the one to spill the information.

  As they maneuvered away from town, the flames snaking out from beneath Danny’s leather collar reflected the fires scattered throughout Periculand, and the fires scattered throughout Periculand reflected the inferno festering in his eyes.

  “We’ll see you again soon, Periculand,” he said to the town, and any lingering flames bowed toward him, as if hearing his words. “The next time we part, you won’t be burning—you won’t be suffering. You’ll be a graveyard.”

  Adara awoke within a casket of burning rubble.

  For a few brief seconds, she actually savored it. She was immune to the heat of the fire and, apparently, the pain of the rocks piled atop her body. After a month of staring at the same plain walls, it was refreshing to see they’d crumbled around her.

  Then she remembered she wasn’t the only person the walls had collapsed on. Even though the fire licking her skin didn’t affect her, it would definitely affect the King and the Prince.

  “Thank the devil I’m not dead,” she muttered, staring up at a slab of concrete inches from crushing her skull. A few other boulders propped it up around her head, saving her from fatal injuries. The rest of her body had not been as fortunate, but the rocks sprinkling her arms, legs, and torso were light and easy to swat and kick off. Groaning, she finally shifted out from beneath her rubble casket and embraced the aches and pains that accompanied freedom.

  “Isn’t the phrase, ‘Thank God?’”

  The familiar voice split a grin onto Adara’s face. Rubbing her eyes open, she found the jail cell was half ruined, the gaping hole above still showering debris from where the ceiling had once been. There was too much smoke for the night sky to be visible, and Adara was impervious to the chilly wind, so nothing had altered, really.

  Except the fire that had claimed nearly every surface.

  At least the three walls of their cell were still completely intact, along with the bars, leaving no method of exit. Adara was really, really eager to scale the burning walls and climb out through the ruptured ceiling that had almost crushed her to death.

  “You really think God saved me?” she questioned as she staggered to her feet. Her threadbare shirt had various holes from her outburst and her flimsy pants had burned up to mid-thigh from the explosion, but not even one hair on her body fried. Other than a few bruises from the rocks, she was completely unscathed. “I’m a demoness, your Majesty. God’s probably crying up in his palace because I’m still alive.”

  From where he stood in his designated corner of the crumbling cell, Angor stopped dusting off his ash-ridden prison garb to frown at her. “You’re lucky I’m not a religious person. Otherwise, I believe I’d be deeply offended by your sacrilege.”

  Even atop a mound of concrete, his head didn’t reach the lip of the wall. Both of their metal slabs had been flattened, which meant they would need to pull themselves up via the small window to reach their only route of escape. Climbing the wall had never been a serious option in Adara’s mind—too much effort—but she felt doubly screwed knowing it would be physically impossible.

  “Remind me to kill Danny next time we see him. The freakin’ guy couldn’t even knock down these walls for us? Rude, if you ask me.”

  Angor snorted as he resumed brushing off his garments. To Adara, it seemed like a silly thing to do during a time such as this, but maybe it was an attempt to distract himself from his own injuries. Like hers, his pants had been singed at the bottoms, but unlike hers, his skin was susceptible to burns, and the sight of the swollen red marks on his calves was disconcerting.

  “I will remind you, actually. I’m curious as to how you’d go about killing a man with Daniel’s talents.”

  “The method that seems most appealing to me is probably suffocation by donuts, but that might be too sweet of a way to die for Danny. He deserves suffocation by Brussels sprouts, or something equally as disgusting.”

  “Well, now I am offended.” Angor managed to glare at her even as the smoke provoked a cough. “Brussels sprouts are my favorite vegetable.”

  “Eugh—and I was starting to like you. Clearly, I was mistaken in my judgment.”

  Angor tried to chuckle, but it came out as coughs when the smoky air infiltrated his lungs. After a moment, he finally decided to cover the lower half of his face with his shirt. “The smoke doesn’t affect you? I should have assumed it wouldn’t. I suppose the heat doesn’t, either.”

  Adara stroked her chin as she considered the redness of his skin and the perspiration dripping from his face. “I guess there are a few perks to this Affinity of mine—I’m not sweating buckets like you, and I could probably become a chain smoker. Now I’m considering it just because I think it’ll piss off Tray—”

  A chunk of rock plummeted from above, and Adara had to lurch toward Angor to avoid it. At this closer proximity, she saw a few pieces of his hair had been scorched, and welts were present on his arms, as well. Perhaps there were more than a few perks to her Affinity.

  “God—you are trying to kill me, aren’t you!” Adara called up toward the indiscernible sky. “I told you He’s angry,” she added to Angor. His eyes were the only visible part of his face, and he didn’t hesitate to roll them. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we’re already dead. This seems like hell to me.”

  “I believe we’re alive…” Angor began, scanning the area, “but…”

  The moment his gaze settled behind her, Adara knew what caught his attention. She’d tried to avoid glancing beyond the bars, but it was unavoidable now. Spinning around, she squinted through the veil of smoke to where the Pixie Prince lay in the hallway, face pressed against the unforgiving floor.

  Naively, she’d hoped he’d fled during the avalanche—such an unrealistically optimistic thought that she hadn’t wanted to check its validity. Now that the reality was spread out before her, she could barely formulate a thought.

  “I don’t think he’s dead,” Angor stated, gingerly stepping o
ver a few flaming pieces of wreckage to stand beside her. “I can feel the nerve impulses connected to his heart, and it’s still beating.”

  “You…can?” She turned her head toward him—mostly to stop herself from looking at Calder’s motionless body—but Angor focused acutely on the Pixie Prince.

  “Yes—the heart is a muscle, as you know.”

  “I didn’t, but thanks for making it sound like common knowledge.”

  He graced her with a withering look, which she enjoyed immensely. Annoying Angor pried her thoughts away from Calder, unconscious and drowning in a sea of flames. None had reached him quite yet, but…he was surrounded.

  “The heart is a muscle that works involuntarily,” Angor explained. “I have not tested my abilities in regard to it, nor do I wish to under this circumstance, but I can sense the impulses traveling from his sinoatrial node—”

  “So you’re saying he’s definitely alive, right?” she clarified impatiently. Judging by the shimmer of mischief in his pink eyes, the King now made an effort to repay her obnoxiousness with some agitating remarks of his own. “Can you wake him up?”

  “Unfortunately, no. Sleep and consciousness go far beyond my powers—as far as I’ve investigated, at least. Now doesn’t seem like the proper time to test that, either.”

  “Now seems like the perfect time to test it—he’s going to die out there!” Restraining her emotions, she added, “If we’re going to be stuck in this cell indefinitely, I’d rather not have a burning corpse in our company.”

  “Well, I’m glad we agree on something,” Angor mused, tilting his head toward Calder. “Why don’t you absorb the flames that threaten his life, then? It would benefit everyone if you did.”