by A A Woods
She pulled again.
The wood leaned out further, distinctly crooked.
Eliza wondered about her parents. They’d been absent in her life ever since October, when she’d become a national disgrace along with the boys. How long until they noticed that she wasn’t answering their intermittent check-in texts? How would they feel losing their second, more troublesome daughter?
Would she see Katie again?
“No,” Eliza told herself firmly, pulling again. “No, do not go there.”
She yanked and pulled and wiggled at the pillar of wood. If only they hadn’t thought to tie it around the detailing, she’d have been able to climb up and loop it over. But the knot was tight, even tighter now that she’d spent the past hour or so pulling at it.
They’d be back soon.
It was now or never.
Panting and already half-exhausted, Eliza rolled her shoulders. Planted her feet.
Leaned in.
And threw herself back.
The wood splintered.
“Yes!” she cried out before glancing behind her. Had someone heard? Trying to control her panicked breathing, she paused, listening for some hint of whether or not she’d just given herself away.
But the mansion was as eerily silent as ever.
Gathering the fragments of her courage, Eliza turned her attention back to the post. It was broken, but not quite off yet. If she could just lean it over…
She pulled again.
The wood splintered more.
It was beginning to look like a jousting spear, all sharp and jagged on one side.
Eliza paused to catch her breath, examining the bits that still connected the post to the bed. A bit of her old spirit flared up in her chest, illuminating an idea.
Spear…
That could do nicely.
Throwing a look at the door that was slightly less frantic than the one she’d given it a moment ago, she kept wiggling and rolling the post free, piece by broken piece.
Eliza Mason would be ready when those assholes came back.
Chapter Forty-Six: Flight and Frenzy
“Uh oh,” Joe said, stumbling as he and Tasha sprinted for the doors of the event space.
“Come on!”
She grabbed his hand and they plunged forward, past screaming waiters and waitresses, up the beautiful, carpeted stairs. The huge oak doors of the event space were shut, cloudy vapor leaking through the cracks.
Distinctly, Joe could hear fists pounding on the other side, accompanied by frantic screams.
The sound was more chilling than anything he’d ever heard in his life.
“They’re in there!” Joe shouted.
“Then let them out,” Tasha responded, stepping aside.
Joe didn’t pause. He didn’t stop to wonder who was watching. The situation had changed so quickly, so dizzyingly, that it was like they’d fallen into a new universe where nothing mattered but stopping the horror-show beyond those doors.
Bending his knees, Joe coiled his muscles and drove himself into the door.
There was a great creaking, like the sigh of a giant.
The pounding intensified.
“Hurry!” Tasha said.
Joe hit the doors again.
And again.
And again.
Finally, with a guttural battle cry, Joe threw himself against the doors.
They burst open.
Joe tripped inside, blinking against the suddenly thick vapor.
What the…?
The scene around him had gone from strange to downright surreal. People in ballgowns and tuxes were fleeing, streaming through the flung-open doors like a crowd after a football game, but with significantly less cheer and significantly more panic.
None of them were his parents.
“What do we—?”
“This way!” Tasha shouted, clamping down on his wrist and dragging him forward.
If she hadn’t been holding onto him, he would have lost her immediately. Her skin shifted and changed like a broken TV screen, dizzyingly fast, blending into the smog and chaos around her. A woman in a blue dress ran past them and Tasha changed to match it, seemingly without thinking.
If Joe hadn’t been so worried for his parents, he would have marveled at how instinctual her power was.
But his wide eyes were fixed on the chaos.
It just happened, he thought as a table was knocked over, spilling food and wine all over the carpet. We just missed it.
The smog in the room was dense and oppressive. Joe coughed, waving a hand in front of his face to clear it. It made his eyes sting and his mouth burn, but he was safe. Tasha had told him he was safe. The allergen wouldn’t affect Abnormals, wouldn’t trigger the immune response in them.
But his parents weren’t Abnormal.
And neither were most of the guests.
Joe’s attention snagged on two men clutching the wall, straining to breathe. Their faces were red, the veins on their neck standing out. They were fumbling toward the exit.
Would they make it?
“There he is!” Tasha said, veering off-course.
Joe pulled his arm free. “Wait, Tasha—”
She vanished without him.
“Damn, damn, damn,” Joe chanted to himself, running over to the men. He grabbed one by the arm and half-threw the guy at the open door. Then he dragged the other into a clearer area.
“Go!” Joe shouted, pointing for the bright square of the streetlamps. He had no idea if the man heard him, because he was already turning back, scanning the room for more suffocating guests, more innocent bystanders who didn’t deserve to die this way.
“JOE!” Tasha screamed from nearby.
He swung toward the sound just in time to see her fly bodily past him, crashing into the far wall.
Three shapes materialized out of the haze, moving toward him. One huge and square, two smaller.
Hans and his bodyguards.
The short, thin one was standing partially in front of his boss, straightening after throwing Tasha. The other one, Pan, was twisting her butterfly knife.
Hans, gas mask secured on his face, was jogging toward the doors.
Pan smiled and stepped away from Joe. Her gaze fixed on the corner where Tasha had been thrown, where Hans had almost reached the exit.
With a sinking feeling, Joe watched her muscles coil.
Watched her spin the knives back, cocking her arm like a pitcher.
“No!” he cried, launching himself at her.
Pan was fast, but Joe was faster. He grabbed her wrist just as she made to throw the knives. His muscles surged with strength and adrenaline, making it difficult not to crush the bones of her arm.
Then it registered.
Pan wasn’t looking at Tasha…
She was looking at Hans.
“Idiot,” Pan snarled, rage burning away the smug coyness. She twisted in his grip like an eel.
“What are you doing?” Joe said, teeth bared.
He wasn’t sure why he was stopping her, now that he knew she wasn’t trying to kill Tasha. But there was so much fear and violence and suffering around him that the thought of any more of it, even for an enemy, was too much.
Hans heard the commotion and half-turned while still hurrying to get away. Joe saw a flash of understanding in the man’s eyes, a moment of recognition as he saw who had betrayed him.
Then he was gone.
Pan swung toward Joe, calm mask back in place. He released her and leapt back, hands held up. He didn’t want a fight.
“It looks like today’s the day for ruined plans,” she said, as if they weren’t discussing anything more dramatic than an afternoon of shopping.
“Enough people have been hurt today,” Joe said, breathing hard, wondering if Tasha had seen the stunt he’d just pulled. Wondering if he regretted it.
“Yeah, but not the right ones.” She flipped the knife, watching idly as a cluster of celebrities staggered toward the door, clut
ching their necks. “Oh well, we should have known it wouldn’t be that easy.”
“Easy? You call this easy?” Joe threw his hands out, gesturing to the bodies slumping around them.
Pan grinned. “You don’t?”
She flipped the knife. Click, click, click. Joe watched her, acknowledging the challenge, knowing she’d accept the tussle he so desperately wanted to give her. The monster in his chest yearned and bucked for that confrontation, for the ability to vent his frustration on someone he knew deserved it. Someone so very, very cold.
But the coughing behind him made the decision easy.
“Fuck you,” Joe said, spitting out the words and trying to channel as much of Eliza as he could in that moment.
Then he turned away.
Half of him expected a knife to slam into his spine or curl around his neck. He was ready for it, every part of him strained to throw her off him. But the attack didn’t come.
“Joe,” Tasha said, stumbling up to him. “Where’d they go? What happened?”
“I don’t know,” Joe lied. “But I’m going to get these people out of here.”
Chapter Forty-Seven: Culpable
Aquila had run.
There were tears in his eyes as he flew, streaking down either side of his face. A lump formed in his throat, larger than he’d ever felt before. Worse than everything was the guilt, squirming in his stomach and eating him alive. Moose’s face was cemented in his mind, fixed like a negative image after a flash. Mouth open, goggles misted over with whatever vapor had suddenly filled the ballroom.
“Aquila…” Moose had whispered in shock as his brother had pulled away.
But what else was he supposed to do?
Aquila knew that the unfolding mess was going to take time, time Eliza might not have. She was in danger and he’d just been offered her location like a beacon of hope, or maybe a ticking clock. He didn’t know! Maybe Scarlett was already calling the mansion, already ordering some faceless guard to kill her. He’d seen that capacity in her eyes, her distain for non-Abnormals. The ugly jealousy that Aquila might care more about some ordinary girl than her. So what choice did he have? Aquila couldn’t handle all this without Eliza, couldn’t be strong if she got hurt, especially if she got hurt because of him.
Even more deeply than that, Aquila felt like the people in that room didn’t deserve him. They’d slandered him, smeared his family name, mocked his siblings. Those snarky assholes and their morning shows had done everything they could to tear down Aquila, tear down the things and people he loved. So what did he owe them? Certainly not Eliza’s life, maybe not even his own. They hadn’t wanted him to be a hero, so dammit, he hadn’t been one. He’d run away, run toward the thing that mattered to him.
Ethics be damned.
Aquila didn’t bother landing in front of the mansion. As the huge building came into view, complete with a dusting of beautiful frost, Aquila tucked his wings in, pulled his body into a ball.
And crashed right through the window.
Immediately, an alarm began to wail.
Aquila ignored it. He had to work fast. He’d seen Victor leave in a hurry with his assistant, seen the helicopter accelerating ahead of him, landing on the top of this very building. They were here, which meant they knew he was too. He had to get to where they were keeping Eliza before they had a chance to use her against him.
He had to move.
Throwing himself through the door of the tasteful sitting room he’d just sprinkled with glass, Aquila hurried out onto the landing. The stairwell was wide and open, just as he remembered. He leapt onto the banister and jumped down, fluttering his wings to slow his fall.
He still landed hard.
“Oof,” he grunted, falling to his knees.
He staggered upright, grabbing hold of the nearest table to straighten himself. It toppled. The vase shattered.
Crunching over broken glass, Aquila spun in a slow circle. There were so many doors, so many options.
Where could she be?
“Eliza!” Aquila cried out.
There was a thump behind a beautiful mahogany door.
Without thinking, Aquila slammed his shoulder into it, popping it open.
The room would have been classy if it hadn’t been recently upended. Huge hardwood desk, silver filing cabinets, enormous flatscreens on the walls. But the man behind the desk was making quick work of the order, ripping through the drawers and tossing contents over his shoulder.
He jerked upright at the sudden intrusion.
“Victor Smith,” Aquila growled, fists clenching. “Where is she?”
“Where’s who?” Victor asked, looking significantly worse for wear than the time Aquila had seen him at the party. His eyes were glazed in a sharp, almost lethal panic, his hands shaking. His previously gelled hair was standing on end, as if he’d been running his fingers through it.
“Eliza!” Aquila yelled, striding into the room. “Where is she?!”
Something grabbed his shoulder.
Aquila spun, snarling.
It was a man, shorter and slimmer than him with dark hair and brown skin. He didn’t flinch under Aquila’s baleful anger.
“You know it’s rude to enter without knocking,” said the man.
“Let me go.”
But something sharp was pressing into Aquila’s bicep, puncturing skin. He looked down to find a protrusion sticking out of the man’s finger, into his muscle.
The man’s smile widened. “Not long now, big-guy.”
“What…?”
A cold, dead feeling was spreading from that spot, a numbness that Aquila knew couldn’t be good. He tried to pull free, but his muscles were stuttering. Failing. He had the distinct feeling that if he didn’t break this man’s focus, he was going to die. But how could he do anything when his whole body had gone into panic mode, adrenaline spiking, breath accelerating.
“Any last words?” the man asked, leaning in.
“Yeah, screw you!” came a familiar voice from the doorway, accompanied by the swish of something heavy through air.
There was a horrible crack of wood against bone.
The man’s eyes crossed.
He swayed, released Aquila.
The numbness, thankfully, stopped spreading, but Aquila could still only stand and watch as the strange, lizard-like man staggered to the side, hitting the doorframe.
Behind him, wielding a massive wooden post like a baseball bat, was the most welcome face Aquila had ever seen in his life.
“Knock knock,” Eliza said, teeth bared in rage.
Chapter Forty-Eight: Burdens of the Soul
Moose sobbed as he worked. He couldn’t help it. Every choking, crying, panicked, suffocating person was another stone on his shoulders, another weight for him to carry.
My fault, he kept thinking, over and over and over. This is all my fault.
He could visualize the vial in his hands, remember it glimmer as he offered it to Victor, and every part of him yearned to go back to that moment and strangle himself. He’d been such an idiot, such a naïve simpleton. Why hadn’t he suspected that Victor wasn’t the good guy? Why hadn’t it crossed his mind, even once, that the first plot he’d stumbled into by accident hadn’t been totally benevolent and well-meaning?
Why hadn’t he thought about it?
Moose grabbed a young woman by the arm, hauling her toward the door. Behind her, someone was crying out wordlessly, muffled. He’d get to them next. His eyes were so full of tears he was half blind, but he muttered to the woman in his grip, “You can do it, almost there. Just try to breathe, the EMT’s are helping people out. They have anti-allergy stuff that looks like it’s working, you just have to get there.”
“M-Moose?”
Even raspy and frightened, the familiar voice jerked him out of his guilt. “Delilah?”
She was blinking at him, throat convulsing, grip tight in his. “M-M-M—”
“Don’t try to talk, it’s ok!” Moose glanced arou
nd, clutching her hand.
Why was it any different to watch her suffocate? It shouldn’t be; every person in this room should be equally valuable. But guilt flooded him in a whole new, fresh wave. He’d forgotten about Delilah in the surprise of the explosion and the terrifying reality of people dying around him. How could he have forgotten about her? And now, the thought of her ending, of him never seeing her bright smile again or tasting one of her experiments when she had a rare moment to play around in the kitchen…
Almost suffocating himself, Moose hauled her toward the door. She stumbled, unable to move as fast as him. He turned and swept her into his scrawny arms, powered by adrenaline and a bone-deep sense of responsibility that he had the awful feeling he’d carry forever.
“We’ll find you help, Delilah, we’re going to get you to someone who can help you. Hold on.”
Moose zoomed out, plunging down the stairs, past the police he’d been handing other people to. They’d discovered quickly that no human could go into the mist without suffocating themselves, but Moose had been able to work fast. That was one thing he was good for, the one thing he could accomplish.
Undo the mistake he’d made, quickly.
But was he fast enough for Delilah?
“Help!” he cried out. “Somebody help! Please!”
Three uniformed EMT’s glanced up from the nearest cluster of people on the ground. One of them had an oxygen mask, the other a syringe.
Moose reached them in a blink.
“Please,” he said, panting for reasons entirely beyond his kamikaze sprint down the stairs. “Can you help her?”
Delilah’s breath was coming in a sharp whistle, which Moose just knew couldn’t be good.
The nearest EMT recovered from her shock first.
“Here,” she said, refilling the syringe. “This will keep her stable.”
She plunged the needle into Delilah’s thigh. Delilah didn’t flinch, just clutched at the concrete stairs as she struggled for air. Struggled to live.
Moose watched, chewing his lower lip. The EMT who had helped him watched too. The others returned to their work, battle-weary and numb.