He risked a quick look at me and shook his head, mouthing the word no.
Nichol staggered to his feet, empty-handed, and had to hold on to the bed for balance. “Give me one reason to go with you.”
Ian hesitated. “Before Jag died, he said there was a chance you could get help at the base.”
The agent sneered. “The sons of bitches only want to take me down.”
Neither confirming nor denying it, Ian held the Stunner a bit higher, its electronic muzzle aimed at Nichol. “How does it feel to be on the other side of a gun? I own your ass now.” He motioned for Nichol to step in front of him. “Let’s go.”
The agent appeared to acquiesce by holding his wrists out, waiting for them to be tied. The sick man’s face was totally wiped of emotion, and I thought perhaps he’d actually given up this time. I should have known better. He rushed at me, his hands stretched out in front of him, fingers curled, as he screamed at the top of his lungs.
Chapter Fifteen
Nichol didn’t get more than two steps before Ian shot him square in the chest. The agent collapsed to the floor and went into spastic convulsions.
“Did he hurt you?” Ian asked, as he crouched to hold down Nichol, who kicked and thrashed his arms.
“He never touched me.” I glanced over at my dad slumped on the floor. My chest tightened with grief. This was too much loss for one day. I glared at Nichol for being the cause.
Nichol’s body relaxed and became still. “The charge must have been stronger than I thought.” Ian turned the Stunner over in his hands. “I’ve never used one before. Jag had me get the gun from his car, told me what settings to use.”
“I saw the explosion.” The memory of it flashed in my mind and brought back the terror. “Everything inside the ambulance bay was on fire. I don’t see how you could have escaped.”
“I didn’t. The impact of the explosion sent Jag and me flying across the room, and we landed under the stairs. I created a bubble around us both, just like I did for you and me during the windstorm.”
“How bad was Jag hurt?”
“At first I didn’t think he was any worse off than me. I dragged him outside to get us away from the fire and noticed a trail of blood on the ground behind us. He’d been struck by shrapnel. He told me he felt fine, said to get the gun and go inside to find Nichol. But when I went to check on him, he was dead.”
I’d hardly known the man, but I’d liked Jag. And I’d trusted him. It made me sad that he was gone. “So you made it rain to put out the fire.”
Ian nodded. “It was spreading into the hospital, and I knew you were in there with your father. You must have thought I was dead.” Offering me an apologetic look, he added, “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
I smiled weakly, and my eyes began stinging again. “I’m just so happy you’re alive.”
He wrapped his arms around me and held me close. I buried my face in his neck that smelled of ashes and burnt tires. I didn’t care what he smelled like as long as I had him with me again. It horrified me to think how close I’d come to losing him.
I pulled my head away so that I could say, “It’s raining harder than I thought possible. I didn’t know you could do that.”
“I didn’t think I could, but I tried what you did yesterday. I tapped directly into the sun.”
I wasn’t surprised it had worked for him, but I wished I’d been there to help. The fact he’d succeeded in creating a direct link with the sun was proof he could stop the coming storm. He just couldn’t do it alone.
Ian returned his attention to Nichol. “He should be awake by now.” He nudged the agent, who didn’t respond. He rested two fingers against the pulse in Nichol’s neck. “Damn. The man’s dead.”
“Are you sure?” I knelt on the floor and checked the agent’s wrist. “Maybe his fever was too far along for him to take the shock to his system.”
“Or...” Ian balanced the gun in his hand. “It’s possible Jag had no intention of taking Nichol alive, but couldn’t bring himself to tell me I’d have to kill a man.”
“I suppose you could argue that Jag did the killing, not you.”
“Even though I pulled the trigger?” He raised both eyebrows.
“There is that.” I saw movement from the corner of my eye and turned to look at where my father lay. He lifted his head and groaned.
“Dad?” I crawled over to him and grabbed hold of his hand. “Oh, my God, I was afraid you were dead.”
His voice a husky whisper, he said, “No, honey. I must have fallen asleep. How did I get on the floor?”
I smiled through my tears. Gut-wrenching grief followed by incredible joy wreaked havoc on my heart. I picked up the hypo I’d dropped when I’d leaped up to lunge at Nichol. The plunger was still extended. My father hadn’t been dosed with whatever toxin was in the syringe.
Ian lifted my father in his arms and laid him gently on the bed. “How are you feeling, Mr. Daggot?”
My dad coughed and glanced around the room. “I don’t know. I can’t remember anything.”
“It’s okay, Dad,” I told him. “You don’t have to remember if you don’t want to. We’re leaving here now, moving to a new home. Starting over.”
He scowled. “But your mother...”
I closed my eyes and heaved a sigh of disappointment. “You know that Mom—”
“Is dead?” A gleam of lucidity shone in his rheumy eyes. It was so rare for him to be this coherent, and I wanted it to last forever instead of minutes. “I know that, Sarah. But she wouldn’t want us to leave Lodgepole. This has been your home since the day you were born.”
I smiled and cupped his cheek with my hand. “We’ll come back to visit, maybe even help rebuild the town when the world is back to normal.” I wanted with all my heart to believe that wish would come true. Ian and I had the power to stop the total annihilation of the planet. But could we pull it off in time?
It didn’t take us long to find the bomb Nichol had hidden. He’d been too feeble to expend much effort, so we discovered it taped beneath the window outside my father’s room. The backup promised by the base in Colorado Springs arrived and defused both the bomb and its detonator. They also took Nichol’s body away. Though reluctant to let us drive to the base on our own, they finally agreed to our using Jag’s car as long as we stayed sandwiched between their two-car escort. My father’s Storm Trooper hadn’t survived the blast. Ian and I surmised that’s where Nichol had planted the first bomb.
I clenched my jaw, feeling the pressure of the world on my shoulders. I had yet to experience a vision of what happened after the cataclysm to know if we would be successful. That made me anxious.
We were closing in on Cheyenne Mountain now. In addition to the base, there was a modern city deep inside the mountain, and Jag had claimed that if the storm could not be stopped, we’d still be safe there. In theory.
Ian was driving Jag’s SUV, and the gentle hum of the car’s electric engine had lulled my father to sleep in the backseat. It was after noon, and I peered out the window at the desolate landscape flanking the Interstate. Violence had become a way for storm-damaged people to express their grief.
Ian squeezed my hand. “Nervous?”
I nodded. “A little. If this doesn’t work...”
“Then it doesn’t work,” he said. “We’ll either live, or we’ll die. Whatever happens will be better than struggling to survive on a dying planet. Best to get it over with, one way or the other.”
I liked his way of thinking, which was just like Jag’s. Black or white. No gray.
Less than twenty-four hours later, after a very long nap in an air-conditioned bedroom and an incredible meal that had included fresh fruit and vegetables, Ian and I were brought to the Kinetic Room. I’d never seen anything like it. The room was about the size of a football stadium, and at its center was an enormous chunk of ice about twenty feet tall and thirty feet long. I had a fair idea what it was for.
The room was freezing, probably t
o keep the ice from melting. Ian and I were given warm clothing to protect us from the cold. I’d forgotten what it felt like to wear a coat. We were directed to a platform elevator at the base of the iceberg and told that it would take us to the top.
I gripped Ian’s hand. “Won’t we fall when the ice melts?”
He looked up to study the platform’s construction. “I doubt it will melt that fast, but I’m sure that’s been thought through. From what I can see, the platform at the top is designed to lower us slowly, as the ice shrinks.” Giving my hand a gentle squeeze, he added, “We’ll be fine.”
As the elevator lifted us to the iceberg’s summit, I watched hundreds of men and women fill the room and take their places in a circle around the manmade glacier. These were Kinetics, all of whom had a kinetic power granted by the sun. I tried to imagine what they could do, and if all of them could be trusted to do the right thing. It seemed dangerous to have them all in one place, but it was their combined kinetic strength that would support us in our task. We needed them to help make this work.
“May I have everyone’s attention?” boomed a man’s voice from an overhead speaker. “Please clasp hands.”
I was already holding Ian’s hands, sensing his heat flow into me. We stood facing each other on top of the ice mountain, our eyes locked and our souls joined. His magnetism was too strong to resist, but I didn’t want to resist. We shared each other’s power, and I felt no lack of control, only surrender by choice. We’d come to know one another over the past several days, and the fusion of our strength was what enhanced the familiarity that grew between us. It was as if I’d known him all my life.
“I’m seeking,” the voice said, and I wondered what he meant. “Forecasters, please seek with me.”
Of course. He was seeking the source of our power. I focused on lifting my consciousness high above the atmosphere, up toward the sun that welcomed me as it had before. Only now I wasn’t alone. There were other forecasters with me, some who could foresee earthquakes and others who foresaw tidal waves, but I was the only one with the ability to warn of impending sun storms. I sensed the strength from all of them pour through me, and my vision became so clear it was as if I could touch the sun’s flares with my bare hands. The solar star’s surface erupted in clusters of flaming geysers, which became explosive volcanoes that shot fiery streams of gas toward Earth. This is what Ian had to stop before it went too far and destroyed the planet.
I diverted some attention to my physical body and noticed that my hands were warm, but the ice beneath me drew the heat away. Ian’s hands gripped mine more fiercely, and that’s when I knew he was working to exert his control over the storm. The geysers on the sun’s surface began to bubble and spurt fire. It was happening for real now, not a vision. And Ian had to make it stop.
The air in the room grew thick and heavy with power. My mind’s eye still watched the sun, but my body registered every emotion coming from the Kinetics: excitement, apprehension, terror...Ian’s fingers trembled in my hand but not in fear. He reveled in his power to take away the suffering and pain of all who had endured the wrath of the sun.
The surface of our solar star rippled, then smoothed as the flares were calmed from flames to sparks. There were no further eruptions. The danger had passed.
My mind leaped forward to a vision of the future, where thick puffs of cumulous clouds dotted a brilliant blue sky, and green meadows spread over hills like an emerald carpet. Trees waved leafy branches heavy with fruit, and backyard gardens burst with color. The birds were back, and so were all the other living creatures unable to survive without help in our sun-baked world. This wasn’t the past as I remembered it, but the future of how it would be again. It finally made sense. I now understood the sun had purified our planet to prepare for a new beginning.
Together, the forecasters withdrew their consciousness from the sun and returned to Earth. The platform that held Ian and me was now on the same level with everyone else. A few exuberant claps grew to cacophonous applause when we noticed the iceberg had melted into a warm pond that lapped at our ankles. We’d done it. We stopped the apocalypse.
I turned to face Ian, whose wide grin expressed joy and pride in what we had accomplished together. His eyes still glowed, but I saw more in them than power this time. I saw love. He drew me into his arms, lifted me off my feet and kissed me long and deep. Our time together wasn’t over. In fact, we had all the time in the world.
* * * * *
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’TIL THE WORLD ENDS
ISBN: 9781460303436
Copyright © 2013 by Harlequin Books S.A.
The publisher acknowledges the copyright holders of the individual works as follows:
DAWN OF EDEN
Copyright © 2013 by Julie Kagawa
THISTLE & THORNE
Copyright © 2013 by Ann Aguirre
SUN STORM
Copyright © 2013 by Karen Duvall
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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