by Theresa Kay
“Thank you,” I say, my gaze still glued to Vitrad’s face.
He turns away and strides back across the room without responding.
Shaking my head, I release a breath before speaking to Kai and Miri. “You understand what we’re doing? What our mission is?”
They both nod.
“Good. Let’s go.”
Lir grabs my arm as I walk by. Please. Be careful.
I lean forward and kiss him, putting every drop of gratitude I’m feeling for his faith in me behind it. I will.
THE E’RIKON CAN MOVE THROUGH the dark woods at close to a dead run. And they do. Kai and Miri slink between trees and duck under low-hanging branches in a graceful dance. I’m not as graceful, or as quick. But I am quieter.
I grew up in the woods. I know how to step to avoid the crack of twigs or the rustle of leaves. The E’rikon can avoid obstacles, and the sounds of their passage are subtle, but my ears can track their movements nearly as accurately as my eyes can.
Miri pauses, and her profile angles toward Kai. He gives a sharp shake of his head, and her attention moves to me. She cocks her head to the side, expectant. Trying to link with me? If she is, it’s not working.
I shrug, and she slips back through the trees until she’s close enough for me to hear her.
“Can you reach him?” she asks, glancing back over her shoulder. “The child?”
I shake my head. “No. He’s a blank spot. It’s like he’s not there.”
“That is not good,” Kai mumbles.
Miri blows out a sharp breath and shakes her head. Kai gestures for her to get moving, and we continue forward, Miri in front.
Twenty minutes later she slows to a careful walk and holds one hand out to her side as if to hold the rest of us back. To be honest, I’m kind of impressed with her… dedication. This is the first time I’ve seen her behave more like a soldier than a disgruntled E’rikon. She stops in her tracks, her hand turning into a fist.
Stop. The command whispers through my mind. Whoa. It’s unsettling how easily Miri slipped into my head, considering earlier she hadn’t been able to get through at all. It probably has something to do with how ramped up I am and how much anxiety I’m trying to pretend I’m not feeling.
Miri points this way and that. Kai nods, and the two of them fan out to the sides and slightly ahead of me. The sound of muffled voices makes its way to my ears. I can’t make out anything specific, but I recognize Carter’s voice, and he doesn’t sound happy.
I pull the knife from my boot and move forward into the space between Kai and Miri. Miri gives me a look that could almost be respect, albeit a grudging one, and jerks her chin up. The three of us creep forward, our footsteps not making a sound. I guess they can be silent when necessary.
As we draw closer, the voices grow louder, and I pause. Getting too close without knowing what we’re walking into isn’t a good idea. I study the trees around me, looking for the perfect one. There. An evergreen with some low-hanging branches I can scramble up easily. I tilt my chin in the direction of the tree and point up. Kai and Miri give me twin looks of skepticism and confusion. I roll my eyes, grab the lowest branch, and climb up until I can see out over the break in the trees ahead.
Carter is standing in front of a group of ten soldiers, tapping his foot impatiently. Just on the other side of the soldiers, I can make out the top of Emily’s head. There’s a smaller form in front of her that must be Ethan. Stu and Harrison are nowhere to be seen.
It appears Carter’s waiting on something—and I’m guessing that something is Jastren. We need to get our people and get out before the redheaded lunatic shows up.
I climb back down the tree, leap the last few feet, and land with a soft thump. “There are at least ten of them,” I say, “plus Carter. But as far as I could tell, I’d say less than half of them are armed. Ethan and Emily are on the opposite side of the soldiers from us.”
Miri presses her lips together, clearly irritated about having to talk out loud. “The others?”
I shrug. “I didn’t see Stu or Harrison.”
“What are the chances they are… free to aid us?” asks Kai as he rubs his chin and looks away.
I can guess what that pause was for and what he was about to say before he thought better of it. What are the chances they’re alive? I can’t think about that now. I’ll stick with Kai’s version of the world. “I don’t know. Not good.”
“I imagine by ‘armed’ you mean guns, correct?” Miri asks.
“Yes.”
She scowls.
“But we have your askari abilities,” I say, “and we’ll be quicker than they are, especially you two. If we can get the soldiers to split their attention somehow… maybe a distraction of some type?”
The E’rikon share a long look, then Miri scurries off into the woods.
“It’d be nice if you would share your plans with me rather than making them on your own,” I snap at Kai.
He shrugs. “Mental communication is quicker.”
I raise my brows and cross my arms over my chest. “So, is she providing the distraction or are we?”
“She is.”
“And what—”
Shouts sound through the forest. “That would be our cue,” Kai says before taking off at a run.
I follow, cursing the both of them. We can’t afford to screw this up, and they’re running off with a plan that they’ve told me nothing about.
Kai stops and holds up a hand as the soldiers become visible through the trees. Carter is still standing in front, tapping his foot with an irritated expression on his face. Kai crouches down, balancing on the balls of his feet, his attention never leaving the men in front of us.
The seconds slip by and nothing happens. What are we waiting for? Didn’t those shouts already signal Miri’s distraction? How—
Kai’s body tenses, and he leans forward, waiting for something.
Miri bursts from the bushes on the other side of the clearing, a near-silent yellow blur of motion. She grabs the man farthest back and stabs him in the chest with a glowing blade before anyone can yell a warning. Her hand moves upward, dragging the blade from his sternum almost up to his Adam’s apple, slicing through flesh and maybe bone with little effort. What the hell kind of weapon is that? She’s already engaging a second man by the time the soldiers turn their attention—and their guns—on her.
But then Kai moves sideways to slide in behind the men’s turned backs. He takes out a third man in a heartbeat, and suddenly the three soldiers with guns aren’t quite sure which threat to aim at. I knew E’rikon were fast, but this is something else. The two of them fight on either side of the group of soldiers with a feline-like grace that’s quicker than anything I’ve seen from them before.
But these men are trained soldiers, and confusion only stymies them for so long before their training kicks in, and they fight back. Kai and Miri move right into the midst of the soldiers, and I quickly understand why. Now the soldiers can’t use their guns without a serious risk of hitting one of their comrades. Smart.
But far from foolproof.
Because one of the soldiers has decided to take that risk. He takes aim directly at Miri’s head.
Before the man can fire I fling my knife. My blade doesn’t land where I wanted, but it does slice across his forearm and cause him to drop his gun.
Miri glances up, briefly meeting my eyes, and then on some signal I don’t catch, she and Kai take off into the woods in separate directions. The soldiers scatter. Carter directs two of them in Miri’s direction, two in Kai’s direction—and two in mine.
The two soldiers closest to the trees move toward my hiding place, one with a gun drawn.
At the impending sense of danger, the raging darkness that lives within my abilities begs to be let out. It’d be easy, simple, to take out every single one of these men with the shikiza. But I can’t afford to lose control now, here. Not even if it means I have to kill these men without the pleasant numbness
the darkness promises.
I take a deep breath and push the shikiza back, instead drawing a second knife from my other boot. I’m protecting the good, not giving in to the bad. I can do this.
The men walk past the tree I’m standing behind, leaving their backs open. I step up behind one of them, grab his shirt, and pull him back and down, jamming my knife upward against the force of his body. His sharp inhale tells me I hit my target, his kidney. I withdraw the knife and use his body weight as he falls to cut across the front of his throat. He hits the ground hard, blood gurgling from his throat.
The second man spins around, his gun coming up with him. I duck and sweep my leg out, knocking him off balance. I’m on him almost before his back hits the ground. I bring my knife down toward his chest, but the soldier slides one arm out to deflect my aim and the blade scrapes into the ground by his head. He bucks me off, rolls to the side, and jumps to his feet. I’m already up. The gun is who knows where, so he comes at me with a fist.
His swing is wide, his elbow extended too far, and he doesn’t angle his body enough. This leaves his abdomen open for me to jab my knife into his stomach. He jerks away, taking the knife with him, and takes another wild swing at me, wincing as he rotates into the follow through.
I duck under the punch, then bring my elbow up to slam into his chin. He falters. A step backward. Two. I slam a fist into the side of his jaw and follow up with a strong kick to the hilt of the knife, driving it deeper into his stomach. The man goes down with a groan. The back of his head bounces against the ground, and his eyes roll back in his head.
My chest is heaving, my breath coming in fast pants as I stand there in a fighting stance, waiting to see if he’ll get up again. He doesn’t. I lower my fists and close my eyes. A tremor passes through my shoulders and down to my hands. There’s time for one deep breath in and out, then I grab my knife and head back toward Emily and Ethan.
Kai and Miri have beaten me there. They both look disheveled, and Miri is favoring one arm, but they obviously managed to take out the soldiers who followed them into the woods. The two Vi’askari are now fanned out on either side of the only soldier left in the clearing—a soldier who, to my horror, is holding Emily’s injured right arm behind her with a handgun to her head.
My stomach drops as the man twists Emily’s arm and she cries out in pain. How the hell am I going to get her out of here safely?
The man bares his teeth, and his eyes dart back and forth between the Vi’askari. He looks terrified—and unpredictable. Emily’s pale, her face distorted into a grimace. She won’t be able to get out of that hold on her own, and the soldier looks like he could snap at any moment.
I move slowly into the clearing with my hands up. It won’t do any good to startle the man with the gun.
The man sneers as I step closer, but his eyes stay on the two Vi’askari. “Nice of you to join us. Tell your pets to back off or I’ll kill your friend here.”
Miri’s eyes narrow, either at being called a pet or at being called my pet, but Kai’s face is blank, focused.
“Jax,” Emily says in a weak voice. “Carter took Ethan. He—”
Her words are cut off by a cry of pain as the man gives her arm another twist. He hisses something into her ear, and her chin drops to her chest. “Now, as I was saying…”
My eyes dart around the clearing. Stu and Harrison are both still absent. There’s no one to pop up behind this guy and take him out. I don’t have any options here.
“Kai. Miri. Stand down,” I say with as much authority as I can muster.
Miri narrows her eyes, but she lowers her hands to her sides. Kai does the same.
Bang!
It takes a split second for the gunshot to register, for me to process the sight of Emily slumping, falling…
He killed her anyway.
“No!” I yell, flinging my arms forward as if to stop Emily’s descent. A charge formed by grief and rage explodes from my hands and slams into the soldier, throwing him back against a tree with enough force for something inside him to crack loudly. His skull? His spine? Whatever it is, he falls to the ground and doesn’t move again.
I rush to Emily’s side, my fingers going to her throat even though… I know. She’s gone. The empty hole in my chest grows.
Carter steps into the clearing with a chuckle, clapping in a mocking, slow cadence. “Impressive. Will my men be that good, do you think?”
“Where’s Ethan?” I hiss, my nostrils flaring.
Carter raises an eyebrow. One side of his mouth curls upward, and he points to a spot above the trees. I see a small silver ship rising, then speeding off toward the horizon, where the white pink tendrils of dawn are just beginning to creep into the sky.
“The package has been delivered,” Carter says.
“Jastren?”
“Of course. That was my agreement with him. The half-breed in exchange for enhancing my men.”
“Enhancing your men?” So he’s not after the E’rikon children? Then what—
He laughs. “Did you think I’d help him out of the kindness of my heart? Hell no. I deliver the kid, I get my own unit of super soldiers loyal to me.”
It suddenly makes so much sense. The “project” Jace overheard Carter talking about. The Reva line designed the enhancements, including the askari one, so presumably Jastren could… Can a human even be enhanced?
Carter laughs again. “All coming together for you now, isn’t it?”
My stomach churns and my head spins, even as a fiery rage slithers through my limbs.
Emily is…
Ethan is…
It’s all too much. The fragile wall I built to hold it back crumbles, and the blazing fire of the shikiza rushes through my veins. This man will die, but first…
“Didn’t Jastren tell you what happened to his last human ally?” I ask. I tilt my head to the side, a half smile twisting my lips.
Carter snorts. He has no idea the danger he’s in. “He is not my ally,” he says with a sneer. “The erk was a means to an end. As soon as I get what I want, I’ll march my new super soldiers into the city. The idiot already killed off half his own people, including—”
A flick of my finger pinches his airway shut, silencing him. Now his bravado is fading, replaced by a slowly crawling fear. My smile widens as power floods through me.
Why have I been pushing away this wonderful feeling? It makes everything so—his body goes rigid—much—his legs give out—easier…
Carter’s face goes blank, blood runs from his nose, and he falls face first onto the ground.
I laugh. “That’s what happened to his last human ally. He died.” I punctuate my words with a kick to the side of Carter’s head.
An image filters through the darkness, shrouding my mind. Jace, laughing as he jabbed a finger into a dead Dane’s temple and mocked him. Very similar to what I just did to Carter.
What I just did…
I lost control of it. I let the shikiza… Again.
Like the flick of a switch, horror floods through me, followed by a sharp, searing pain behind my eyes. My stomach rolls, and I fall to my knees with my shaking hands plastered to my temples. Blood drips from my nose, making warm, red trails over my chin.
It won’t be so easy to contain the shikiza this time. I’m weak from earlier, and my grief from all the deaths tonight—not to mention my rage and hatred against Carter, Jastren, and everyone who stands with them—is feeding it, nourishing it.
A cry of pain bursts past my lips, and tears trickle from my eyes. Kai’s face comes into view as he drops to his knees in front of me. He reaches out…
No! I scramble backward. I don’t want to hurt you.
Kai backs off. He doesn’t try to touch me again. Instead he speaks softly while holding my gaze with his. “The child is depending on you. You need to regain control. You are strong enough to do so. Virym…” His eyes shift to Miri for a split second. “Rym told me he believes in you, so I do too. I cannot instruct you
on what to do, but somewhere within yourself you already know how.”
I nod, swallowing back the pain and confusion threatening to choke me. I do know. Lir helped me once… to breathe through it. Like a panic attack.
I close my eyes. A deep breath. A slow release. Over and over again, inhaling the pale glow of calm and exhaling the shaded mist of grief and rage. Another breath. In and out. Gradually, the panicked, out-of-control feeling fades, and the pain and anger of the shikiza drains away.
THE TREK BACK THROUGH THE woods is near torture. Pain pulses behind my eyes. Not the searing type that comes with the shikiza, but a soft throbbing that comes from anxiety, exhaustion, and the aftermath of adrenaline. I’m covered in someone else’s blood and have at least three more deaths on my head. All for nothing.
Emily is dead.
Ethan is with Jastren.
And I still have no idea what happened to Stu and Harrison. If that soldier’s willingness to kill Emily even after I’d listened to him is any indication… they’re probably dead too.
The numbness has spread enough that, as sick as it makes me, I hardly feel any grief for Emily. What kind of awful person does that make me?
Worse, I just can’t deal with any of this until later. Again.
Jastren has Stella and the other E’rikon children somewhere for who knows what reason. And now he has Ethan too. There’s no question in my mind that we have to get them back. Until that’s accomplished… I have to hold it together, and keep all the pieces of me that want to give up far, far away from any decisions I make.
Kai’s behind us somewhere, making sure our tracks are covered. Miri’s been silent the entire way, not that we’d have much to talk about if she wasn’t, but any conversation would help keep my mind away from the places it keeps trying to go.
I puff my lips out with a loud exhale. “That was pretty impressive back there. I know you all have special training or something, but can all E’rikon move like that if they need to? What’s part of your training and what’s just E’rikon?”
She gives me a side-eyed look. “Most of it is training. Some is the askari enhancement.”