A smile curved on his lips. “Three hours.”
“No cure?”
Chace shook his head.
“Thank god. I knew you all were dealing with something bad here but that man is a knucking psycho.”
“No kidding,” said Harper, bandaging April’s wounds. “You all have your orders. Go.”
And so they went.
• • •
Deryn had barely managed to grip the dragon statue poking out of the barrier as she plummeted to what should have been her death. She heard Xander scream for her but couldn’t see him. It was only him, Luka and Finley up there against probably thirty mind-controlled guards and at least three Guardians.
They were fucked.
Deryn closed her eyes and shook away the thought.
No. They were going to win this.
She swung back her foot and kicked her right heel, successfully activating her boots. She released the statue and hovered twenty floors above the ground. She fought back her nerves and began to rise, her knife held firmly in front of her as she stepped onto the barrier, slashing it so the laser flew at a group of guards charging at Xander, Luka and Finley, who stood in the center of the balcony with their backs touching.
Xander followed the thrust of the laser back to her, relief spreading across his face as she jumped down and ran toward him.
Deryn crashed into a guard, grabbing his arm and flipping him before stabbing her knife into his neck. Then she used her knife’s laser on three others. It didn’t kill them, only catching them in their middles, but it did cause them to collapse. Finley took that moment to stop their hearts. One. Two. Three.
“Thank fucking god,” said Xander, wrapping his arms around Deryn and giving her a squeeze. She joined their inverted circle.
Guards kept coming at them in droves. The Guardians on the balcony weren’t even bothering, laughing as the four of them fought an endless battle for their lives.
“If someone with one of those damn packs doesn’t come back soon, I’d say we’re pretty fucked,” said Luka, kicking a guard to the ground before firing a blast.
Finley focused on keeping a shield around them, but they had to wait for it to drop before firing or else it would shoot right back at them. At least the mind-controlled guards weren’t critical thinkers.
Something zipped over their heads. Finley put up another shield and a blast rained down on the guards, killing three and successfully scattering the rest.
Dakota landed beside them.
“Where’s April?” asked Deryn.
“With Harper. We need to work our way toward the edge.”
They all nodded and broke their formation.
Before they were just trying to stay afloat. Now they needed to come up with a plan, because standing in the center of an ever-growing pile of guards wasn’t going to win them any battles.
• • •
Elvira followed her father’s tracker to the thirty-third floor. She didn’t know what was on that floor and was feeling a little frightened. Her father’s messages to her had become more and more frantic and she knew he wouldn’t be on that floor without good reason.
She located the door he was behind and opened it.
The place was in tatters. Her father was going through cabinets in the white room, tossing everything onto the floor and screaming.
“Father.”
He turned, his eyes stone cold as he stared at her.
“Where the hell have you been?” he demanded, storming over to her.
“I was -”
Elvira didn’t get the chance to answer before her father had her by the neck. He slammed her against the wall, choking the life out of her.
“Worthless child!” he screamed. “I should’ve forced your mother to abort you when I found out you were a girl, like I wanted. But I had a weakness for her back then and she begged me to let her have her little princess.”
Saevus released her with a jerk and her head smacked against the wall.
Elvira gasped for air, still feeling like she was choking as she held her wounded neck.
“That traitor Luka injected me with something. Some plant toxin that makes you blurt out hidden truths before killing you. Ever heard of it?”
Elvira shook her head, still trying to catch her breath.
“You know, I rather enjoyed stomping your mother to near death. I should’ve taken care of her myself in the first place. I probably would have killed you that night if Soren hadn’t stopped me.”
As terrible as the confession was, it was something Elvira already knew.
“Perhaps you should have,” she said, standing up straight. “I handed Ronan over to the Resistance. Even if you miraculously manage to survive today, you’ll never see him again.”
“Who?”
Her heart lurched. “Your son.”
Saevus raised his eyebrows. “Oh? Well then, if you plan to survive the day I recommend you capture Finley and fix whatever she did to keep her mind-control from working. One way or another, I’m getting my son.”
“You already gave the okay to kill her.”
“Then I’ll take it back.”
Elvira stared at her father with a growing itch she’d never felt before. “Why her?”
“Do I need a reason?” he said, activating his wristband and sending out a message to capture, not kill Finley.
“It’s because you’re obsessed with Xander and she’s the only one around he’s fucked!” Elvira shouted, unable to hold her anger back any longer.
“Not true. Deryn Leon still seems to be alive, for whatever reason,” he said, watching security footage from the balcony through his wristband. “I blew her off a twenty-story balcony and, yet, there she is. Still in one piece.”
Feeling her anger bubbling to the surface again, Elvira turned to leave.
“Elvira.”
She looked back at her father.
“Come back with Deryn Leon’s head, or don’t come back at all.”
“I’ve been your most loyal servant my entire life, yet you dismiss me so easily.”
“I never wanted a servant. I wanted a leader. You want the cold, hard truth, Elvie? Here it is. I chose Xander over you not because he was a man, but because he commanded power. Even now, his friends continue to follow him. But you, you couldn’t even get your own husband to obey you.”
Elvira felt nothing as he spoke, her heart numb to the pain he’d caused her over the years. She looked into his eyes, so similar to her own, and with a deep finality said, “Goodbye, Father.”
Elvira walked out and left him there. She should have left the tower and never come back, but she didn’t. Like she’d told Ronan, she was her father’s daughter, and she would fight his war for him. Because that was all she knew.
So Elvira headed down to the twentieth floor, her Element held steadily in her hand as she prepared herself to fight one last battle in her father’s name.
• • •
Deryn fell back as a guard knocked her in the jaw. While her knife was definitely helping, it simply wasn’t enough. She needed a gun.
“Deryn!”
Xander tried to get to her but there were too many guards. He couldn’t keep protecting both of them.
The guard stood above her, pointing his Element at her face. With a determined cry, she swung her leg and knocked him off of his feet as he fired, causing his blast to strike one of his companions.
But, before she could stand, another guard was there and ready to strike her down.
It was a hopeless battle.
She knew it was.
More guards kept pouring out of the tower and it was just the five of them on the balcony, barely hanging on.
Deryn heard her name, though the scream sounded distant and lost in the fog of her ears. This was it. The end. She’d done all she could. She closed her eyes and waited.
“Deryn!”
Her eyes snapped open. That wasn’t Xander.
Someone swooped over her head and
crashed into the guard. She spotted the gravpack as they raised a knife and jammed it into the guard’s chest.
His head turned.
Deryn smiled as her brother tossed her a gun.
“I thought strategists don’t fight,” she said.
Talon grabbed her and threw up a shield. A blast crashed against it. “They do when their little sisters are caught in the middle of a battle,” he said, giving her a squeeze. “Matilda was more than happy to take the reins.”
“Where the hell is Sam?” she asked, firing a shot over Talon’s shoulder and taking down a guard. The bullet was small but, once it hit, a poison spread through the recipient’s veins and killed them almost instantly.
“Aw, did you miss me that much, my green-eyed vixen?” said Sam, landing beside her with Danny in his arms.
“Those mechanical spiders were killing civilians! We were actually working with the guards to stop them before their eyes got all white and creepy,” explained Talon.
“But we got those bitches!” said Sam, firing at an approaching guard.
“I see we got our work cut out for us,” said Laramie, landing next and dropping off his father.
Deryn looked around as the Resistance members wearing gravpacks landed, all of them carrying someone.
“I saw a few more of our people down below waving at us,” said Laramie. “I’ll grab who I can.”
He flew off, leading Adrian and Evangeline down with him.
“Where’s April?” asked Sam, looking around.
Before Deryn could answer, Xander was there and grabbing Sam by the collar.
“Where the fuck have you been?”
Sam smiled and bopped his nose.
“I missed you too, my golden-eyed devil. Now, let’s get back to discussing my dead-eyed warrior. Where is she?”
“Hurt,” answered Deryn. “She’s with Harper on the ground somewhere.”
“Can’t leave her alone for two seconds without her running off and playing hero.” Sam forced a smile, but there was no hiding his worry.
“Cupcake!”
Deryn’s heart skipped a beat as the nickname she’d come to love entered her ears. She ran to Bronson as Adrian plopped him onto the balcony, leaping into his arms.
“You fucking idiot!” she said, crying as she held him tight. “You should’ve kept running.”
Bronson smiled and kissed her hair. “Like I could ever do that.”
Sam eyed Bronson over Deryn’s shoulder with great interest. “Well, hello there.”
Xander grabbed Sam’s collar again and very sternly said, “Keep it in your pants. He’s not for you.”
“Why the hell are you here?” shouted Luka, running up to Bronson and Deryn while Finley covered him.
“Oh, Luka, I missed you too!” Bronson exclaimed. He leaned in and ever-so-slyly gave Luka a kiss.
Luka sighed and said, “Be careful.”
Bronson nodded. “Ruby, I’m waiting.” He held out his arms.
Xander groaned and went into them. “Fine, you fucking idiot.”
While Bronson basked in the feeling of being surrounded by three of the people he loved most in the world, he couldn’t help but feel that emptiness only his best friend could fill.
“Where’s Quigley?” he asked the moment Xander pulled away.
Deryn and Xander looked at each other and then at Luka.
“We haven’t seen him,” said Deryn. “But we heard he was here when ...” She trailed off and stared over the balcony’s edge.
Bronson gulped. Quigley had been there when his little sister fell off the balcony. And, somehow, he just knew that she wasn’t pushed. He recognized the other body on the street. Fiona had jumped after the man she’d thought she loved.
Before Bronson could dwell on it too much, Odette appeared beside him and shouted, “Where’s Lona?”
Deryn and Xander looked at each other again. That was another person they hadn’t seen since all of this began.
CHAPTER 54
Lona walked into one of the rooms on the north end of whichever floor she was on. She guessed it was somewhere in the low sixties but she’d been moving so quickly she’d lost count.
The room was empty. Like many of the rooms on the middle floors. The Saevuses had wanted a flashy tower but had failed to come up with one-hundred uses for it. Wasted space.
Which was why Lona felt guiltless burning it to the ground.
She went to the windows, attached the small magnetic bomb to the metal wall and walked right back out to attach the next bomb to the east wall.
Lona knew the tower wouldn’t actually collapse - it was built to prevent that - but once the bombs she’d planted over the past week were ignited, the inside would become a wasteland.
She’d first thought of the idea when the president made her behead Jasmine, her beloved wave and the closest thing she’d ever had to a mother. But she’d needed to find the right way to go about it.
While Lona had come to respect Finley over the past month, she knew the woman wasn’t intelligent enough to have created all of the technology she’d used throughout her treachery. Someone else had created the device that detached their wristbands. So Lona had gone to the Government Lab and located the coworkers of the woman who’d given Xander the mind-control chip. After feeling them out, she’d told them her idea. They were more than happy to supply her with the bombs.
As Lona placed one on the east wall near the stairwell, she counted what was still in her palm. Only two bombs left.
That would have to be her final floor.
The fire would spread. The inside of the tower wasn’t as greatly protected as the outside.
Lona went to the south end of the floor, opened the door to the stairwell and placed a bomb on the wall. Then she left the door wide open and went to the nearest elevator. She waited for the elevator to open, stepped inside, placed her last bomb on the control panel, sent it to the highest floor possible and stepped out before the doors closed.
The deed was done.
Lona had warned one of the waves about what was coming. The woman had been so kind after what had happened with Odette and she couldn’t just leave her there to die. She and the other waves had stolen some of the fruits and vegetables they’d been forced to grow but forbidden to eat on floors fifty-five through fifty-eight, then disappeared through the servants’ entrance.
All Lona had left to do was make sure Xander, Deryn and Finley were out of the line of fire.
And Luka?
Her heart ached as she thought of him. He’d killed her sister. The man she’d thought she might love had taken her most precious person from her.
As much as she wanted to forgive him, to give him the benefit of the doubt, the cold way he’d looked at Odette’s lifeless body spoke volumes.
Perhaps he was too far gone to be forgiven.
As Lona walked down the stairs, she debated checking her wristband. There had certainly been a lot of messages popping in but, at that point, she really didn’t care what the president had to say.
By the end of the day, he would burn.
As Lona approached the fortieth floor, she heard a faint sobbing. She slowed her steps and very quietly moved forward, peeking around each corner until she spotted someone. It was that friend of Xander’s who’d betrayed him. Something Quigley. He was sitting on the steps, his cheeks damp and glistening as he stared vacantly at the wall in front of him.
“What are you doing?” asked Lona.
His head moved ever-so-slowly to look at her. He blinked, his jaw hanging open as he gaped at her.
“I know you wanted to help your sister but what about the others?” she said, her boots clanking as she walked down the metal steps.
Lona had heard the guards talking about Soren and Quigley’s sister jumping to their deaths. While she could relate to the pain of losing a sister, she didn’t understand why he was moping around in a time of crisis.
“I tried to help them but I failed,” he said, his wor
ds quiet and clipped.
“Are Xander and Deryn out yet?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then you haven’t done enough.”
Lona found she had no patience for Quigley. He clearly wasn’t a bad person, but instead of helping he was just sitting there feeling sorry for himself.
“If I were you, I’d move. There’s a bomb planted right there.” Lona walked down a few steps and pointed. “Along with several others in this stairwell, not to mention the rest of the tower. Good luck.”
Lona continued downward. She was quite aware of the footsteps behind her, but she didn’t have time to figure out if he was following her or simply on his way out. She had people to save and a tower to bomb.
As she approached the twentieth floor, there was no missing the chaos coming from the balcony. Dozens of guards were running through what was once a wall, but was now a pile of ash and blood. Lona stood back and watched them, a chill trickling down her spine as she noticed all of their milky white eyes.
“What’s wrong with them?” asked Quigley.
“Mind-control through their wristbands,” someone answered.
Quigley nearly leapt out of his skin when Elvira appeared beside him.
“Why so jumpy?” She flashed him that wicked smile of hers. “I believe I gave the order not to kill you.” Then she turned her attention to Lona. “Why aren’t you out there fighting?”
“Why aren’t you?” Lona countered.
Elvira tsked. “I’m not the one who’s spent a great deal of time with Finley and Luka lately. One might assume there’s a third traitor in our midst.”
Lona gaped at Elvira, her heart quickening as her words sank in. Luka was a traitor.
“By the surprise on your face, I’m guessing you weren’t working with them. Although I do wonder why you haven’t checked your wristband and learned this information already.” Elvira crossed her arms and studied her closely. “What are you hiding, Lona?”
Lona didn’t answer. She turned away and ran down the last of the stairs, pushing through the guards until she was outside.
Arise (Cruel and Beautiful World Book 3) Page 57