THE ELECTRIC HEIR

by Lee, Victoria

  “I’m scared,” Dara admitted, softly enough he couldn’t even hear himself say it.

  But Noam must have, because he curved an arm around Dara’s waist and drew him in, burying his own face against Dara’s hair. “Me too.”

  Noam smelled like the shampoo they’d borrowed in the Lakewood house, like vetiver and smoke.

  “How much longer?” Dara asked against Noam’s leather jacket. Leo’s leather jacket, technically.

  Noam must have checked his watch using magic, because he didn’t let go. “Fifty-six minutes.”

  Those next fifty-six minutes dragged by slowly, the quad filling up with still more people—god, there were thousands of them. It wasn’t as if Dara hadn’t attended public government events before. But usually he was shuffled from place to place by someone bureaucratic and self-important, pausing only long enough for someone to shield his face from photos—the one good thing Lehrer had done as a parent was to keep Dara out of the public eye.

  Dara had never been part of the crowd.

  And then a ripple spread through the audience, a sudden ramping up of tension. Dara knew before he even looked:

  Lehrer had arrived.

  The car was sleek and black—vintage, not driverless; a relic from the early years of Carolinia. Modeled, perhaps, to look similar to the one from which Lehrer had emerged at his coronation.

  The driver opened the back door. Dara whipped away before Lehrer could emerge, air gone to frost in his lungs. He stared at the sea of other people built up behind them, all craning to see—lifting phones overhead to film—and hearing the slow crescendo of delighted screams as Lehrer presumably made his first appearance.

  “What’s happening?” Dara asked tightly, finding Noam’s hand again without looking and gripping hard.

  “Nothing,” Noam said. “He’s just standing there, waving. It’s a photo op.”

  Knowing Lehrer was still two hundred feet away didn’t stop Dara’s mouth from going dry. Two hundred feet was far closer than he’d been to Lehrer in—

  Well. Since the gala.

  Dara had insisted on coming today. Everyone tried to talk him out of it—Claire, Priya, even Noam. Leo’s staying back, Noam had told him. We can’t bring weapons onto the grounds; they’ll be looking for that kind of thing. Without magic to defend yourself, you’ll only be in danger.

  It wasn’t even as if Dara thought he was wrong.

  But the thought of staying home—watching the speech from his phone and praying, praying they all made it out alive—

  No.

  “He’s walking now,” Noam murmured. “The Chancellarian Guard is ahead of him . . . he doesn’t look happy about that.”

  The crowd roared louder, all those Lehrer groupies screeching just for the privilege of being heard by him. Dara wanted to press both hands over his ears. Wanted to tape their mouths shut.

  “A hundred feet,” Noam went on. Then: “Fifty.”

  Dara turned to look.

  Lehrer was close enough the proximity sent Dara’s heart slamming against his ribs, his breath coming in abortive little gasps he muffled behind clenched teeth.

  He looked the same as he always did. Age hadn’t touched him. Nor, it seemed, had fevermadness—there was no characteristic brightness to his cheeks, no glassy gleam in his eyes. It was as if he’d been constructed from alabaster and bone.

  Unbreakable.

  But not all the cries of the crowd were of adoration. A low rumble of dissatisfaction echoed far beneath all that devotion—there were those here today who had read all the material Noam leaked online this morning. All that evidence of torture and injustice.

  Dara and Noam both averted their gazes when Lehrer drew closer, letting others in the crowd move in to take their coveted spots by the guard rope. Crammed between unfamiliar bodies, they both just stared at each other, neither one speaking—as if even breathing too loudly would lead Lehrer to them.

  But Lehrer passed without incident. The crowd kept shouting his name until he had ascended the chapel steps—Dara glimpsed a brief shot of Lehrer waving from the portal before he stepped into the narthex and the heavy wooden door fell shut.

  The crowds relaxed after that, attention turning toward the large screens that had been erected for viewing the proceedings within. Dara had always thought it an odd choice, giving this speech from inside the chapel instead of on its steps, where the public could see—but now that he was watching the live feed from the chapel itself, he was beginning to understand.

  Duke Chapel was a massive feat of architectural design, all tall gothic arches and long stained glass windows. To reach the chancel, Lehrer had to proceed down the length of the entire nave—almost three hundred feet, flanked by eighteen hundred people filling the antique pews. With the late-afternoon light glittering in through the painted glass and lighting gold on Lehrer’s hair, it was not hard to imagine Lehrer as a saint . . . to see this whole ceremony as the apotheosis of man to god.

  The speech began, broadcast out to the crowd—streamed live to millions of holoreaders and phones and tablets and televisions all over the country. The world.

  Noam and Dara stood side by side and listened, Lehrer’s voice the same smooth baritone that had defined Carolinian rhetoric, carried on the same accent Lehrer had spent a hundred years perfecting. An accent he could easily have lost in the 116 years since Lehrer and his family left Europe and came to the former United States.

  I hate him. The thought was almost like a realization in some ways. Dara had said it before, thought it a thousand times. But it had never been entirely true. There was always that part of Dara that still hoped Lehrer would change his mind. That he’d find some room in his blackened heart for his adopted son, after all—that Dara might arrive at some nebulous future point where Lehrer decided he was, finally, a peer.

  All that was gone, dried up and blown away in the wake of these past eight months.

  Dara never imagined losing hope would feel so . . . liberating.

  “ . . . with a grave and cautious heart that I am announcing the temporary suspension of term limits for all elected federal positions,” Lehrer’s voice said. “Until such a time as we can be assured of this country’s safety from Texas’s heinous War on Witchings.”

  Dara and Noam exchanged looks, Noam’s mouth twisting in a furious knot. Dara could have told him this was coming. Dara had told him a dozen times that Lehrer’s seizing tyrannical power should come as no surprise.

  Not that it mattered. Not if they finished what they came here to do.

  A shiver ran through the crowd at that. It seemed they weren’t the only ones who were unhappy with such a declaration—although it seemed like there were just as many people shouting their support.

  What if everything Noam released isn’t enough? What if we defeat Lehrer, but no one believes us about what he’s done?

  The fear dropped like acid into Dara’s stomach and roiled there. He dug his short nails in against the back of Noam’s hand.

  They had to believe. They must.

  Dara couldn’t keep screaming the truth again and again, and never being heard.

  He barely paid attention to the rest of the speech. All he could do was stare over the heads of all the people gathered here as dusk dropped like a slow curtain, transforming gold light into silver. Near the end Noam pressed a hand to the small of Dara’s back and said, “You should get out of range. You don’t want to get caught up in this.”

  He was right. But Dara didn’t move.

  “I’m staying with you,” Dara said. “Until the end.”

  Noam bit down on his lower lip, but eventually he nodded and used that pressure on Dara’s spine to draw him along as Noam started trying to shift his way back to the front line.

  “Excuse me,” Noam said, raising his voice to be heard. “Excuse—press, let us through—”

  Only the crowd closed ranks, shifting tighter as if to hold them back on purpose. As if making room might mean giving up their own vantage po
int.

  “Shit!” Noam’s cheeks were already coloring as he looked back toward Dara—flushing dark enough that some part of Dara reflexively twinged toward concern. Noam was too close to fevermadness already.

  Dara glanced around, trying to find an easier route forward; there was none. All he could see was an ocean of unfamiliar faces, speckled with the gleaming screens of cameras and phones.

  Dara nudged Noam’s elbow. “Can you watch through someone’s tech?”

  Noam didn’t look any less angry, but he nodded once and turned his face upward—as if staring at the darkening sky would help him focus. He had the first syringe of suppressant in hand, thumb poised on the plunger.

  The crowd’s cheers were almost as perfect a signal of when the chapel doors opened again. Dara caught a glimpse of what was happening on the phone screen of someone in front of him—of Lehrer standing there on the steps, his hand raised in a diplomatic wave.

  And Dara heard the sharp intake of Noam’s breath as he drew on magic, Dara tasting blood on his own tongue—a beat before the stone cathedral tower of Duke Chapel collapsed.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  DARA

  Panic erupted.

  It took what felt like minutes for the entire tower to crumble, although Dara knew it must have been mere seconds—the stone caved inward, the demolition restricted to as narrow a space as Dara’s calculations could manage given the sheer height of the thing. Because there was no time for Noam’s telekinesis to force the wreckage down on Lehrer alone.

  Noam’s wide eyes met Dara’s as he lifted the syringe of suppressant to inject himself.

  He never got the chance.

  The crowd was already reeling, stampeding. Someone slammed into Noam too hard, and the syringe fell from his hand.

  “No!” Dara shouted, lunging.

  The syringe rolled over the cobblestones, its clear contents sloshing in its vial. Dara scraped his knees on the rock; someone’s foot caught him in the shoulder, and Noam was shouting something up above him, but Dara couldn’t make out the words, couldn’t think about anything but the suppressant. He flung out a hand, grasping a beat too late.

  The syringe was crushed underfoot, broken glass ground into the street and the vial’s contents a slick stain on stone.

  Someone grasped Dara’s arm and hauled him up—and for a split second Dara was reeling through blind space, terror climbing up his throat, before Noam’s voice in his ear said: “It’s me—Dara, it’s me,” and his vision refocused on Noam’s familiar face.

  “It’s gone,” Dara said, clutching at Noam with both hands. “Noam, it’s—”

  All at once the color drained from Noam’s face, his body gone still against Dara’s grip.

  “No,” Dara gasped, faltering forward to catch Noam’s weight as he listed to one side. “No—”

  Too late. They were too late. Noam’s skin already felt hot against Dara’s palms, his head lolling against Dara’s shoulder as Dara tried to heave him back onto his feet.

  The first part of the plan had worked perfectly. They’d collapsed the tower on Lehrer, forcing him to expend a massive amount of magic to keep himself alive.

  The rest of the plan—cutting off Lehrer’s power source—had gone desperately wrong.

  “Is he okay?” someone asked, their hand grazing Dara’s arm. The voice sounded familiar.

  Dara looked up.

  “Taye?”

  Taye, in his Level IV uniform—Taye with the bright grin and the omnipresent red candies, Taye the mathematics genius—was staring at Dara like he’d never seen him before in his life.

  “Wow,” Taye said. “You’re, like . . . alive and shit.”

  “Old news,” Dara said. “What are you—how did you find us?” He grunted as Noam’s legs gave out.

  “Tell you later. Grab his left side.”

  Taye hooked an arm under Noam’s other shoulder, and between them they heaved Noam up enough to drag him forward over the stones. “What the hell are you doing here? Why is Noam in a leather jacket? Why is Noam unconscious? And why are you not dead?”

  “That’s a lot of questions,” Dara got out through a tight jaw. “Right now, we need to get Noam . . . somewhere else. Not . . . here.”

  The fallen boulders were already shifting in front of the chapel, dust blooming toward the dusk sky like a cloud of ash. Noam made a low, pained sound.

  “Inside,” Taye suggested. “That building, there?”

  No. Too obvious. They had to go somewhere defensible, somewhere with limited entry points. Somewhere Lehrer could find them, but where they wouldn’t be taken by surprise. Somewhere like—

  “The crypt,” Dara said.

  For once, Taye didn’t argue. He did some complicated bit of magic—likely involving math and gravity—and suddenly Noam was much lighter against Dara’s shoulders. Light enough Dara could bend down and grab him under the knees, hoisting him up into his arms like a child.

  “Who are we running from?” Taye asked as they shoved their way through the pandemonium. “The people who brought down the tower, or the other people?” “The other people,” Dara said grimly.

  “Yeah. Kinda figured, after half of Level IV disappeared under mysterious circumstances.”

  “You won’t turn us in, will you?”

  “Are you serious? I’m not a snitch, Shirazi.” Taye looked deeply offended by the suggestion, so Dara let it go.

  They burst free of the crowd closer to the chapel. All the guards and soldiers had abandoned the area—or been crushed under the falling rock, more likely. Not that it helped that much—the army was already setting up a barricade on the far end of the lawn, a helicopter’s blades cutting through the air somewhere overhead. That’s where Priya and Claire and Ames would be now, preventing those soldiers from searching the grounds for Dara and Noam before they finished their job.

  The wreckage of the tower had started to shift more visibly now, stone and brick tumbling toward the quad as Lehrer slowly forced his way free. They had to run right past it to get to the chapel.

  If Lehrer got loose before they got to the chancel—if he wasn’t exhausted, wasn’t fevermad enough when he finally caught up with them—

  With every bit of magic they forced Lehrer to use, Noam got weaker.

  Dara glanced down at Noam’s pallid face and steeled himself. He knew what choice Noam would’ve wanted him to make.

  “Taye,” he said. “Can you make the debris . . . bigger?”

  Taye followed Dara’s gaze to the ruins of the tower. A beat later the stones were already multiplying in size, growing exponentially larger, heavier, requiring that much more magic to move.

  Dara stopped short for a second, pressing his fingers to Noam’s neck, his heart twisting in his chest—

  Noam had a pulse.

  Noam had a pulse, and was breathing, and he—he didn’t actually look any worse than he had a moment ago.

  A shudder ran through Dara’s entire body, and he squeezed his eyes shut. It worked. Lehrer had drawn as much power from Noam’s blood as he could, and now . . .

  Now, all the magic Lehrer used would be his own.

  The chapel was still and empty when they crawled through the half-collapsed side door and into the cool interior. Shattered glass littered the floor like lethal jewels, those gorgeous stained glass windows in pieces now.

  Dara and Taye carried Noam up to the chancel, Taye shoving open the small wooden door next to the iron grate barring off a smaller private chapel. A short flight of stone steps led them down into shadow, into the crypt.

  The space was smaller than Dara remembered, claustrophobic under a heavy rounded ceiling and lit only by a single swinging lantern—the rest had gone dark, shattered as ricochets from the tower’s collapse echoed through the chapel.

  Dara settled Noam on the floor, propping his head and shoulders up against the altar. Noam’s head tipped forward, chin slumped against his chest.

  “What can I do?” Taye asked, crouched do
wn next to them as Dara dug through Noam’s pockets, fumbling until his fingers closed around the second vial of suppressant.

  “Go up there and hide,” Dara said, glancing at him as he tucked the syringe into his own pocket. “And—hold on, give me your phone.”

  He entered his burner number into Taye’s contacts.

  “Text me,” he said, pressing the phone back into Taye’s hand. “Stay out of sight, and tell me when Lehrer gets closer.”

  “Closer?”

  “He’ll look for us,” Dara said, and it came out sounding far braver than Dara felt. “He knows we’re here. And I’m pretty sure it won’t take long for him to find us.”

  Not with this proximity. If there was anything left of that blood connection between Noam and Lehrer . . .

  They couldn’t hide.

  “You got it,” Taye said, and he squeezed Dara’s shoulder once before pushing to his feet and disappearing back up the stairs and into the church.

  Alone, Dara’s own breath was far too loud in this confined space—gasping on each inhale, like he was choking on his own air.

  He was almost out of time.

  The earplugs were in his back pocket; Dara fit them into his own ears and held them down while the foam expanded, the noise of the crowd outside retreating to a dull hum, and then silence.

  He glanced down at his phone screen—still dark, for now.

  Dara looked at Noam, sagging against the altar, motionless, like he belonged in the crypt already. Dara brushed a hand over Noam’s damp, fevered brow.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.”

  He crawled up the steps, stone slippery and cold under his hands—but he had to stay low, in case something had happened to Taye, some lethal explanation for why he hadn’t texted yet. But when Dara emerged into the nave, it was still empty, still dark.

  Silence pressed down against his skull, a feeling like being very deep underwater. Dara hugged his arms around his own chest as he straightened upright, but he doubted the shiver in his limbs had anything to do with the cold.

  He pulled out his phone and looked. The screen had gone white, a message from Taye. He’s out.