by Maria Amor
“That’s okay,” Dylan said, feeling his heart beating faster. If the fire-aligned Guardians running the prison-home situation had figured out that they had dismantled some of the wards, and that they intended to escape, they were all screwed. He stood and walked to where Odan stood, trying to “read” the elf’s state. Odan was definitely agitated, but Dylan didn’t know what had caused that specifically; he could only hope to find out once they were relatively private.
He followed the elf down the hall to his room, every moment thinking of what might be impending, what new struggle might be on the way. Odan unlocked the door and Dylan stepped into his prison room, trying not to immediately turn around and demand to know what was wrong. “It’s sad I couldn’t talk to Suzanna more,” Dylan said blandly. “I’ve been starting to get lonely and bored.”
“The people above have discovered that something is amiss, but they don’t know what,” Odan said. “I believe one of your friends—not sure who—used newfound abilities against them, clouding their minds somehow. They don’t know what anyone is doing, but they know the wards are starting to not have the same effect.”
Dylan nodded; that wasn’t as bad as he’d dreaded. At least they would still be able to make an escape attempt, but it highlighted the fact that they absolutely couldn’t let themselves get moved. Their captors were getting nervous. “The food will be safe—I’ll mark what you shouldn’t eat. They are planning on moving you all this evening.”
When Odan left, Dylan decided to take a nap; he knew he wouldn’t oversleep, and it would be good to have some rest when they needed to make their getaway. He still wasn’t sure what they were going to do about Eliza, but maybe it would come to him while he slept. Dylan took deep breaths, trying to still the lingering anxiety that had risen up in him at Odan’s agitated appearance.
They were still okay, they could still put their plan into action. Sleep was what he needed. Cold carbon copied coping… he turned over, thinking about what Julia would do, how she would operate under the circumstances. She would figure out a way to get Eliza out, too.
Dylan was awake by the time the sound of someone unlocking his door came to him, and he’d figured out what he would do—what the group would do—to make the escape happen. Solange had his tray with her, and she nodded ever so slightly to indicate that this was the one to be wary of. She barely pointed to a bowl on the tray, and nodded again, and Dylan knew that it was the soup in the bowl that he should avoid.
He ate the rest of it, carefully tasting to make sure that Solange was right, that there wasn’t anything else that he might need to avoid; of course, there was always the possibility—he thought glumly—that the elves had been playing a long game all along, and that he’d been an idiot to trust them at all. But after a few moments, Dylan didn’t feel any effects from the meal other than what he expected, and he had reason to hope that whatever their captors had chosen wasn’t a potion that would take over an hour to actually take effect.
Dylan laid down in his bed, feigning sleepiness in case someone was watching him, and waited. That, he thought, was the worst part of the whole thing: having to lie and wait for the people to collect him. Having to pretend to be unconscious, not even able to so much as scratch an itch if he got one—and just thinking about having an itch made a tingle start up on his nose, on his knee, along his shoulder. He breathed slowly and steadily, focusing instead on the plan. They would come for him at any time; hopefully he could fool whoever came to collect him—and the others—into thinking he was really unconscious, deeply asleep instead of wide awake.
When the sounds at his door started again, Dylan had to resist every impulse in his body to move. He continued breathing slowly and steadily, keeping his body as lax as possible, his eyes closed. He could feel the energy in him, water-aligned, beginning to react to his emotional state, and brought the kind of control that he hadn’t had to use in months to bear—he wasn’t going to “leak” the plan. He heard someone approaching the bed—two someones, he realized after a moment—and resisted the supreme temptation to open his eyes. He had to wait until they’d at least reached the corridor, and he would have to keep up the ruse until then.
Apparently, someone had left the door open to make it easier to carry him out, Dylan realized; as the two people lifted him, he heard shouts from the hallway, heard wind howling. Someone cussed up a storm, and the sounds of a more physical struggle came to him. Come on, just a couple more moments.
The people carrying him seemed to get some haste from whatever altercation was going on in the hall, and Dylan felt them moving him quickly, heard them saying they would get him out of the room and then help with the others.
“Son of a bitch! They’re not out at all—crap, someone grab the restraints!” Dylan couldn’t quite resist the smile that twitched at his lips at the captors’ shock and dismay. He took a deep breath and opened his eyes, and the two elves dropped him in surprise. The jolt hurt, but Dylan focused on his role in the escape. He called on the energy deep inside of him, murmuring a soft incantation, almost to himself, and felt the words have their intended effect.
The wind-tunnel that the hallway had become transformed into an indoor gale, rain pouring through the wind, driving the elves back, and the fire-aligned Guardians with them.
He stood up quickly and spotted Tal, Suzanna, and Keyne, all of them acting. Azhar was still in her room, and Dylan nodded to Tal, who he knew had the compulsion ability; they would need to get Azhar, get Eliza, and then if they could keep up the distraction, they could—hopefully—get out of the building altogether. After that, Dylan wasn’t sure what they would do—but he was certain something good at least would come of it.
Tal grabbed one of the elves and Dylan watched the energy surge through the changeling as he brought his energy up. “Unlock this door.” The elf resisted for a moment, but he was no match; he turned to do as he was told. If we can make this work for Eliza, we’re on top of everything, Dylan thought. He could only hope that he was right, that they were going to make it. He could only count on there not being more complications to come.
CHAPTER 20
Julia could barely believe that they were within two miles of the house where Dylan had been held for months. She would—with any luck at all—see him again in less than two hours. “Careful up here—there’s a lot of roots in the ground that will trip you up,” Blake told her.
“Thanks,” Julia said, glancing down to make sure that she didn’t trip. A thought tickled the back of her mind; Blake seemed to be more knowledgeable than she would have thought about the area leading up to the address where Dylan and the others were being held.
They’d sneaked out of Sandrine the night before; Julia had been surprised to find that Blake had a plan—one he carefully texted to her after the school day ended, while they were pretending to talk about something else in the multipurpose room in the air-aligned dorms.
My parents had my car brought up to a place about five miles from the school, he’d explained. We can take that up to a certain point, and then we’ll have to walk. But then, Julia had asked—how would they even get off-campus in the first place without anyone knowing?
Blake had helped her sort through that. Julia didn’t want to use her compulsion ability if she didn’t have to—and he seemed to recognize that, even though he’d told her more than once that she needed to be ready to use it if the situation came up.
They had managed to sneak out of the dorm building fifteen minutes before midnight; somehow, Blake knew when the monitors would be doing their rounds. When she’d asked him how, Blake had just smirked and said he’d needed to sneak out more than once.
As she walked through the thick woods, Julia could feel the earth-aligned energy all around her, and knew that they were likely to be up against more than a few earth-aligned creatures in addition to the fire-aligned Guardians running the show.
She’d been careful to try and preserve her energy as much as possible during the long trek to get to
the middle-of-nowhere location, but for the first time, she began to think that it was probably foolish to believe that she and Blake could get the captives out on their own. We should have brought Magda, and Kelsey, and James and Dermott. But they hadn’t. And if they had chosen to bring those four—Julia and Blake had discussed it—it would have just increased the risk that they’d be caught before they ever made it off-campus.
The gates to the school had been locked; Blake had taken her hand in his, reached out with his other hand, and Julia had pushed her energy through him, just as she’d done in Central Park. They’d had to be careful—they didn’t want a huge thunderclap to wake everyone up—but the electricity generated had been enough to fry out the system, and Blake had managed to shove the heavy gates open and then shut once more to do at least something to cover their tracks for a short time.
Julia had gotten the first message from Kelsey at six in the morning. They just did a bed check of the entire dorm. They’re after you and Blake. By then, they’d managed to get halfway to where Blake had said they’d have to abandon the car, and go on foot to the actual house. They’d both been exhausted by then, too tired to do anything else other than curl up in the seats of the car and sleep for a few hours. When her alarm had gone off, Julia saw that she had another text—this one from Magda. They’re after you, but no one knows what address. They leaned on us in first period to try and get someone to give it up.
From then onward it had been a race, Julia thought; they had to get to the house and get their friends out of captivity before the widening net searching for them could intercept them.
Blake’s words cut through Julia’s thoughts. “I’ve been here a few times,” he said. “My family used to go hiking through these woods.” Julia frowned, thinking about that. There was another tickle in her mind—another almost-thought that there was more to it, that she should realize something that was only just starting to come together.
“How often were you out here?” Blake shrugged in response to her whispered question.
“Every summer, just about,” he said. Julia paused; even though it was after sunset, it was still warm—predicting a hot summer yet again—and she had been walking for at least a mile, after traveling on little sleep. She couldn’t even see any sign that they were on a trail of any kind at all, and the fact that Blake could navigate the area in the dark, after presumably not being in the area for what—years?—was somehow troubling.
“So you know the people who own this house, I take it,” Julia said.
“Yeah—did I not mention that?” Blake glanced back at her.
“No, you didn’t. Even when I showed you the address,” Julia said. She knew she should have reasoned that he would know—after all, he had come up with most of the plan that they’d used to get to the place—but somehow actually hearing it made her pause.
“I guess I just didn’t think of it,” Blake told her, shrugging. “Let’s get a breather—you look tired, and we’re going to both need all our energy to make this happen.”
Julia nodded her agreement to that proposition and sank down onto a nearby rock, still slightly warm from the day’s sun. She looked at Blake, trying to decide what it was about the situation that was making her so uneasy. He’s helped you every step of the way, because—he says—he thinks you need a friend. You kissed in the park. He’s gotten close to you, but why?
It was hard for Julia to come up with any reason that would make sense; obviously, she thought, Blake was attracted to her—but if that were the case, why hadn’t he tried to catch her eye before her birthday? He had—she was certain—known about her eligibility for just as long as everyone else had. He had danced with her, he’d been invited to her birthday, his family and him both.
“What’s up?” Blake frowned in the darkness and Julia shrugged.
“Just thinking,” she said.
“About what? Maybe I can help come to a conclusion.”
“Just...what we’re going to do once we get onto the property,” Julia said, feeling suspicious still without being able to put a finger on exactly why. He’s good-looking, he’s helped you out, he got you off-campus. He knew where to go. Is he really that suspicious? Couldn’t he just want to help you because he likes you?
“Well, I think probably—if we can—we should split up. You can find Dylan and the others, and I’ll figure out who’s in charge, see if I can keep them distracted.” That sounded good, but somehow Julia didn’t trust it.
“But what if I need help getting them out of wherever they’re being held? We should have brought at least one other person with us,” Julia said.
“We’ll make it happen. Besides, once you can get to them, Dylan and the others can help you bust them out, right?” Julia supposed that that made sense.
“How do you know the people here? You said you used to come every summer.”
“Yeah,” Blake said. “My parents tried to keep us on the west coast as much as possible, but in the summers, we’d come here.” Something about how he said that rang an alarm in Julia’s mind.
“So you were on the west coast unless you were here?” Julia tried to keep her tone neutral, even as something started to fall into place in her mind. “Who do you know here?”
“Oh—uh, they’re friends,” Blake said.
“And yet somehow it didn’t occur to you that they might have been involved in the disappearance? In the kidnapping?” Julia rose to her feet and felt the energy in her body, restless like gusts of wind, beginning to pick up. The trees around her shivered, limbs beginning to sway as the air around them came to life.
“I just didn’t think they’d do something like that,” Blake said, shrugging. “I was surprised when I heard the address.”
“No you weren’t,” Julia said. “I remember showing it to you. You weren’t surprised at all.” She found Blake’s eyes in the darkness and stared into them, feeling the energy welling up inside of her. It wasn’t at all like using the compulsion ability on Guthrie; it was almost instinctual as Julia’s distrust of the boy in front of her deepened.
“Tell me the truth,” she said firmly, hearing the change in her own voice as the energy surged through her and formed a kind of dart, shooting out of her and into Blake, bright yellow and impossible to avoid.
“My parents came up with the plan,” Blake said, blurting it out fast. “They got some friends to help them so they wouldn’t come under suspicion, but they wanted you isolated, alone, so I could get close to you.” Julia’s eyes widened and she felt the energy she had shot at the boy beginning to wane; she reinforced it.
“Tell me the rest,” she insisted.
“They wanted me to get close to you, to get you to like me. They thought that if Dylan and the others were out of the picture, you wouldn’t have a choice but to find new allies, and then once you got to know me a little bit, you would want to be with me.” Julia stared at Blake in shock, reviewing the months since the abduction in her mind.
She had been suspicious of Blake at the very beginning—questioning his motives, wondering why he suddenly wanted her attention; but somehow, somewhere along the way she’d just accepted him—precisely because she didn’t have anyone else at Sandrine to help her. And slowly she’d trusted him more and more, until she’d all but stopped questioning it.
“You bastard,” she said quietly. “You knew this was going on all along and you played your part and…” she shook her head. “What were you going to do once we got onto the property? Tell everyone I was there, stop the whole thing?” She stared at him, and sent her air-aligned energy in his direction once more, forcing her will over his. “Answer me!”
“I was going to tell them you were there,” Blake said. “I texted them about an hour ago to let them know we were on our way. They were going to have Dylan and the others moved before we even got there.”
“And then it would just be a failed mission and I’d be on another goose chase,” Julia said, laughing bitterly as it became clear to her. “And
you’d help me again, and if I got close to finding anything out for real, you’d tip them off again.” Blake nodded.
Julia’s anger rose to a boil as the enormity of it shocked her. “I trusted you! You made me trust you, and you were playing along with this the whole time!” She stood and strode right up to Blake, who raised his hands defensively. “Well that is not going to be how this goes down, do you understand?”
“I can’t,” Blake said.
“You can, and you will,” Julia told him firmly. “You are going to lead me out of these woods and get me into the house.” Blake shook his head, resisting the pull of her compulsion. “Lead me out of these woods right now, Blake Andrews!” she pushed harder on him than she had any of the previous times and Blake turned away, starting down the trail that Julia could barely even see.
She followed him, barely keeping her anger contained. Julia had known that there were less-than-ethical elements in the council, in the Guardian world, for most of her teenage years—and her encounters with Dean Dimitrios, with the corruption going on between the council and her school, had only confirmed that it was worse than she’d imagined.
How could she have been stupid enough to take anything that Blake had said at face value? How could she have been so naive? I would have been better off with Magda. He made me blind. I was better on my own.
They came out of the woods, and Julia saw people leaving the big, sprawling house—almost fleeing it. “Mom! Dad!” Julia shoved Blake as soon as he called out, glaring at him; she hadn’t given him any kind of compulsion against sabotaging her—that had been her mistake. But when two of the people fleeing the house heard the voice, they turned in her direction.
“Whether you want to or not, you’re about to help me,” Julia told Blake. She grabbed his hand and sent her energy surging through him, treating her own body as nothing more than a conduit for pure, unadulterated air. She smiled to herself as lightning lit up the sky above them, the boom of thunder so loud that she could feel her bones shaking from it. She kept the surge going, knowing she couldn’t do it for very much longer—knowing that she needed to keep some for the rest of the fight to get her friends free—and directed the combined energies between herself and the two people who had started towards them at Blake’s call.