Ange. Here. No wonder those enforcers had been so inept. They weren’t reinforcements; they were interrupted in the middle of a prisoner transfer. Which means—yes, there. A bare three floors away and closing fast, a second car full of the expected reinforcements.
“Stop staring,” I order Ravel. “There’s more on the way. Take cover—”
He grabs the Undergirl by the elbow and shoves her into the open elevator car. She protests. He reaches down and hauls on the enforcer blocking it from closing.
“You don’t have time for that! Liwan’s too far away to reach you in time. And the rest—there’s no way you can load them all in and get clear before reinforcements arrive. Just take the stairs!”
“How long?” Liwan, overhearing, calls from a corridor away. He hits the door in front of him again and then turns his weapon on the lock, firing twice, barely reacting when a bolt ricochets into his shin.
“What are you doing? There’s no time—hurry!” He won’t make it through another skirmish, not on his own. He needs to get out of here.
Ravel kicks the enforcer’s legs out of the path of the elevator’s sliding door and steps over the body. He puts an arm out to hold the girl back and calmly presses the button for the lowest floor the elevator can reach.
“You wouldn’t. Don’t you dare—” The mechanized doors slide shut on my protests.
Moments later, the locked door in front of Liwan cracks. The whole latch mechanism falls out, smoking. Prisoners stream through, bowling him over. He curls up, covering his head.
In the distance, the elevator chimes again. The doors slide open just as the newly freed prisoners round the corner. Enforcers start firing into the crowd without even stepping out of the car.
Ravel abandoned them. Abandoned us. He is using the distraction to escape with Ange.
Prisoners scream and fall. The lucky ones flee back the way they’d come or past in the opposite direction, forgetting or unaware the floor is a closed loop. Some few, probably devotees of Freedom, correctly identify the unassuming door across from the elevator as the way out and risk the dash for the stairwell.
Liwan pulls himself up, sways, and leans into the wall for balance. He glances at his cracked and overheated weapon and heaves an endless sigh.
“Of all the stupid, reckless, pointless—” I start.
“Jealous,” he wheezes, hobbling toward the screaming and ignoring the prisoners desperately fleeing past him to nowhere. “You want in, huh? Too bad. ’S my party.”
For a madman on his last legs, his eyes are surprisingly clear. He even smiles faintly. “That was a good trick. At the end. Surprise attack. Who?”
It’s not worth the risk, blowing Ravel’s cover. Not even after his latest betrayal. Liwan doesn’t have a chance making it out of here safely. I tell him so.
He nods, still painfully shuffling toward the enforcers. “’S fine.”
“It’s definitely not. You know how many of yours made it out? One. No one’s coming to save you. You risked it all, and for what? How many of these prisoners are going to be walking around free by the end of the day?”
He leans so near the corner he could reach around it if he wanted to. Head down, eyes closed, sweat standing out on his skin. “You’d have risked us. For one.”
“If you’d just listened to me, everyone would be safe right now!”
“No.” He lifts his head. Pushes away from the wall. Sways. Pulls himself straight. “No such thing. My choice. End well.”
He throws himself around that corner, shouting orders with a ferocity that belies his gasping faintness only moments before.
The enforcers haven’t even bothered stepping out of the elevator. The only escape route off this floor is the stairwell door across from them. All they have to do is sit tight, safely ensconced in steel, and fire straight across the hallway.
For every prisoner who makes it through, a half dozen slump to the ground or lose their nerve and run screaming past into the closed loop of the floor. But in less than a minute, Liwan has rallied a handful of prisoners and sent runners to herd the stragglers back for a mass push to escape.
The Refuge Force reinforcements aren’t prepared for organized resistance, not after how easily the prisoners scattered under their first blows. Volunteers risk themselves to build a barricade of unconscious bodies, angling in toward the exit. There are only a few weapons on the rebels’ side left intact and still loaded. Every shot is a precious chance for another knot of prisoners to break for the door. Liwan insists on staying behind, one of the last left upright, wedging himself against the fallen to shoot for as long as he can cling to consciousness.
It’s all so pointless. Everyone he’s trying to save is doomed. Maybe not here, not today, but soon. Then again, so is he. And if I had any way to save him from falling in this moment, I would.
Instead, all I can do is tell him he’s doing great; he’s saving them all. I count the escaped prisoners off for him, one by one, inflating the numbers to the point where he laughs, blearily. Thankfully, he slumps into unconsciousness before the next car full of reinforcements arrives.
Then I abandon him to his fate. If he was willing to sacrifice the few days or weeks of freedom he might have held onto to give these prisoners his share, the least I can do is make good their escape.
When I catch up with him, Ravel isn’t impressed. “Ange is in bad shape, flame. Don’t you think you’re asking a bit much? Hard enough to vanish one dead weight into the ether, never mind a whole straggling band of useless drones.”
“More than half of them are yours. And Ange’s. Handle it. Quickly.”
“Yes, darling,” he huffs. “I’ll see about rescuing the whiny dancers, too, if it’ll make you happy.”
Ugh. I think I preferred “flame” as his pet name of choice. I have to assume he doesn’t realize he’s imitating his mother. Unless . . .
Fluffy nudges me. If I had a neck right now, the hair would be standing up on the back of it. There is no way he has been working for her this whole time, right? No reason for him to rescue Ange if that were true, for starters.
“Who’s nearby?” he asks, interrupting my examination of his recent actions.
“No one. Obviously.”
“Okay. Well, obviously, I can’t just keep pushing this thing.” He gives the wheeled cot an unnecessarily hard shove with his one good hand. “We’re running out of clear floor. Neither can I carry Ange while racing around rescuing ragtag bands of prisoners after getting shot, although I do very much appreciate your superhuman assessment of my skills. Find me the nearest muscle, and I’ll see what miracles I can pull off for you.”
His whining is eye-roll-worthy. They barely winged him. But he has a point, much as I hate to admit it. His quick thinking has gotten Ange this far. Or brazenness—come to think of it, I’m not sure it even occurred to him that diving into a Refuge-controlled elevator to steal an unconscious prisoner could backfire.
With my luck, if I tried it, some surveillance drone would notice and lock the car down between floors. I’d be left to stew until Refuge Force could collect me at their leisure. But of course, he gets effortlessly delivered to the lower levels, complete with a handy wheeled cot to save him breaking a sweat no less. And now he wants help?
Too bad for him. He’s only skirting the wreckage of Freedom’s halls right now. While the former club is technically below ground, it’s really only in the topmost layer of the labyrinthine underground sprawl. Most of the people who know how to survive down here also know to hide in the far reaches and are nowhere near . . .
Except for Haynfyv, who doesn’t seem to be aware of the concept of hiding.
I can’t believe this. Ravel’s inhuman luck strikes again. “What are you doing down here?”
Haynfyv pokes at a shred of flocked velvet, shining a lamp into the chamber half-hidden beyond its drape. He shows no sign of having heard me. Which is typical. But just because I can’t boss him around doesn’t mean he can’t be useful.
It’s a slight diversion, but Ravel is willing to risk it once I explain.
“Message from Her Worship,” he calls, making his way across the pitted floor of Freedom’s purple hall, wheels squealing and skidding in the debris, as if there’s nothing at all unusual about the missing heir to the throne turning up in an abandoned club with an unconscious prisoner in tow.
“Where have you been?” Haynfyv towers over Ravel. “And isn’t that—”
It’s a good thing Ravel has so much practice acting the arrogant and entitled brat. He talks over Haynfyv’s protests, issuing commands and immediately swishing off as if he’s certain they will be obeyed, all without giving away the slightest shred of information about his own plans.
“What happens when he runs into a dead-end?” I say. “You’re not worried he’ll question his orders and end up handing Ange back over to Refuge?”
Ravel snorts. “Not likely they’ll let him leave. ’Specially not with Ange in tow.”
They? I could have sworn he just sent the inspector into an abandoned corner out near the edge of the city. Maybe there’s some secret enclave of Underfolk near there that will intercept him before he gets stuck. As it is, I have no idea how the bumbling inspector has escaped capture this long—he seems to keep forgetting that he’s technically in trouble.
But I’ll let him go for the moment. I need to focus on rounding up the straggling prisoners and smuggling them away to safety before Refuge Force catches up.
In the end, Ravel keeps me too busy arguing about if we really need to save yet another batch of escaped prisoners, or if I couldn’t be happy with just the ones we’ve managed so far—darling, flame, now be reasonable—to grill him on just what brought him back to the city. Or rather, who.
Chapter 22: Resurrection
“You could have said something.”
I don’t mean to whine. It’s embarrassing. Besides, it’s not like I had a moment to spare to deal with the shock even if he had spoken up when he first returned.
And what I really mean to say is—what I really want to say . . .
But there are no words. Stunned tears obscure my attempts to express how—how grateful—
“I know,” Ash says quietly. “I’m sorry it took so long. We can talk later. Right now, it looks like you have other things to worry about.”
But Ash is alive.
And here. With Ravel. And not just that, but also with Ange’s sister Amy, and her . . . Actually, I’m not entirely sure what Sam is to Amy, but Lily treats him like a father.
I could strangle Ravel for that—if I could actually lay hands on him right now. He had no business bringing a kid back to this place, and he knows it. For that matter, Ash knows better, too.
“Everyone’s a critic.” He grimaces. “But you’re right—Lily shouldn’t be here. Problem is, by the time we realized she stowed away, it was too late to turn back. And it’s not like we could just leave her to fend for herself on the other side.
I laugh. And then sob.
Ash is alive. Ash is alive—and here. And—“What about the others? On the ship with you? And Aleya, is she okay too?”
He hesitates, his expression clouding over. “Later. Right now, you’ve got to do something about Ange.”
“I can’t. Go ahead and try, if you like. She’s too sick to get any sense out of. She needs medicine. Someone here must know where she kept stuff in Under. Or—Ravel, what about your connections? Can you get her what she needs?”
Ravel glowers. He’s been leaning in a corner staring down his nose at everyone and doing a poor job pretending my reunion with Ash isn’t driving him wild.
“You’re the one who brought him here,” I remind him. “You can live with the results. Or we can fight about it later if you want. But right now, Ange needs your help.”
“He can’t save her,” Ash interrupts. “She’s too far gone. They don’t have treatments that can bring her back. You’re the only one who might be able to manage.”
“Me? I don’t know what—”
He holds his hands up, stopping my protests. “You’re her only hope, C. Just because you don’t know how to help her doesn’t mean you can’t. Dreamweavers heal. She’s beyond human medicine now. So it’s you, or nothing.”
“But I’m not—I can’t—”
“Cole.” He brushes Ange’s hair aside, wincing at the heat burning her up from within. “You don’t have time to wallow. It’s your choice. If you want to save her, you’re going to have to skip the identity crisis and just try. I can come with you, but I can’t do it for you.”
He dismisses impossibilities so easily. Magic, healing, my absolute failure to learn or reclaim the dreamweavers’ power that I only ever borrowed temporarily anyway . . .
I mean, sure, I can dreamwalk now, but isn’t that because I only really exist in the dreamscape to begin with? And I’ve already wasted more to try to save her than I can afford. More time, more lives, more energy. The smart thing to do would be to let her go now. To let this fever take her unawares, instead of dragging her back to face the coming horrors at my side.
I’m not that strong. “Ravel, you’re in charge of treatment. Get her help.” If I’m going to do this, I might as well stack the deck in my favour. He’ll make sure she gets the best medicine available, while I do . . . whatever it is I can.
“He’s right, you know,” Ravel hitches an insolent thumb in Ash’s direction. “We don’t have anything that’ll save her.”
“You heard her.” Ash drops to sit on the floor with a wall at his back, frosting over with mist. To me, voicelessly, he says, “Won’t do much good, but it doesn’t hurt to keep him busy.”
Ravel snorts, apparently well able to hear both of us from the other side now. “Whatever, glitter boy.”
But Ash is already gone, his body protected behind its silver shield, the rest of him brushing by to burrow into Ange’s feverish nightmares. I follow him into the dark.
He finds me there, takes my hands, presses his forehead to mine in the crushing turmoil of Ange’s fractured inner landscape. We anchor each other, space flexing and warping around a core of solidity that starts with the merest brush of fingertips and grows, moment by moment, inch by inch, into an island of our own making.
“Good.” Ash backs off to where we can see each other without going cross-eyed. “See? You’re better at this than you think. Now let go.”
I shake my head, gripping tighter as his fingers relax.
He winces. “Ouch?”
Our bubble of stability wavers, stretches as he steps back, and firms up again without popping. “Good,” he says. “Just like that. You’re you. I’m me. We’re safe. We’re together. Now: where is Ange?”
I swivel, peering into the chaotic mess around us. Senseless shapes form, waver, and fracture into a new cycle of growth and decay so fast my head throbs. “I can’t see her. I can’t see anything.”
“Then don’t look. Feel. Where’s Ange, Cole?”
I ease a hand up against the seam between us and the madness beyond. It crackles against my skin. I skip back, curling my injured arm to inspect the damage.
But there are no burn marks, no shredded flesh. The skin’s not even red.
Ash sighs. “Is that your hand?”
Does he think I hurt myself? I hold it out to show him the unbroken skin.
“Ange doesn’t have time for you to play games. Is that your hand? Is this mine?” He waves and then snaps his fingers.
A tree branch sprouts in place of his forearm. The twigs rustle, dropping a leaf. As it drifts down, the branch is replaced by a fish, silvery tail merging into the warm brown of his elbow, fins fluttering and mouth gaping. It blinks stupidly at me. I blink back.
Then it’s gone. Ash pinches his fingers at me in imitation of the fish’s gasping mouth. “Glub glub. Fish. Tree. Arm. Focus, Cole. Now: is that your hand.”
“You could’ve just said, ‘Hey, stupid, we’re in the dreamscape,’ if you were in a hurry,�
� I grumble. “Fine. This isn’t my hand. This is an imaginary construct of a hand that I associate with myself. Happy?” I pinch my fingers back at him.
He grins. “Nah. That’s your hand, silly. Doesn’t matter if it’s also a fish, or a tree, or a pirouetting pink bunny rabbit. You’re you. I’m me. Now: where is Ange?”
I rub the furrow between my eyes, pressing against the growing ache. “You know, seeing as how we’re in just a bit of a hurry, it would be great if you tell me what you know and we could get on with it.”
He shrugs, spreads his hands. “Where’s Ange?”
I turn my back on him. Stare out into chaos—and it starts to click. There’s still no pattern, nothing solid or stable or real in any sense, but why should there be? It’s not a landscape from the other side, mapped and bordered and pinned down with all the usual rules like gravity and time and space. It’s the dreamscape. Ange’s dreamscape. In which case, she can only be—“Out there, right? All around us.”
I reach toward her—and Ash is there to stop me, pulling me back before I can break the surface of our little island.
“You won’t find her like that. She’s not herself right now. Or rather, she can’t hold herself together. So you’ll have to do it for her.”
Huh? “How?”
“How should I know? I’m just a dreamwalker, C. I don’t work like that.”
I scrub a hand over my face, letting my head roll back. “Great. I’m powerless and you’re clueless. This is going so well.”
I wish Cadence were here. But this time it’s just me. No snarky last-minute tips. Ravel’s cocky attitude won’t get me anywhere either, not when there’s no one here to manipulate into doing my work for me.
So instead, I try to imagine a me that knows what she’s doing. How would I help Ange if I had a dreamweaver’s power back and the skill and wisdom to use it properly?
I take a deep breath and dive out of the bubble of safety, leaving Ash behind.
Burn the Skies Page 14