by Trisha Leigh
No. It’s the Others who Broke her. I have to remember that. And find a way to believe it’s the truth.
***
As we travel, the memory from this morning, of the half-Sidhe way of making waste, pushes to the forefront of my mind and I cling to the idea that she might not be Breakable, at least not in the human sense. For the first time, I hope Griffin’s right about them being the best and strongest species.
Dark, jagged cliffs rise around us, forming impenetrable walls that force us closer and closer to the road until our cover is nearly gone. If the riders happened by, they would have a hard time missing us, but thankfully it’s not long before we can push back into the brush again. The country here is strange and rough—barren in places, lush in others, and completely uninhabitable most of the way.
The last couple of days warmed up, maybe even into the sixties at midday, but today the temperature sinks. Clouds gather to the west and south, signaling the coming spring storm. In South Dakota, as in Iowa, I suspect we’ve got as good a chance at snow as rain.
It’s late afternoon and the sun is sinking to our right when we find the Underground Core. It rises in front of us and, as Greer promised, it’s not something we could have missed. There are four giant faces carved on the face of a rock.
The sight stops us all cold. Well, except for Greer, who keeps listlessly walking forward until I pull her to a stop.
“What on earth is that?” Pax breathes.
“I don’t know what it used to be, but I’m guess that’s where the Underground Core is now,” Lucas responds.
I grunt my agreement, tugging Greer up from a crouch. “Let’s get closer. It’s going to be dark soon, and we need a better idea of the layout so we can find somewhere to stay.”
It takes us another two hours to get to the mountain itself, but it’s made easier by still-standing road signs here and there pointing us in the right direction. The rock is called Mount Rushmore, and the closer we get the more curious I am as to who the men are and why some humans felt the need to leave their faces on a cliff for all eternity. It frustrates me that we might never find out, so when the signs point us toward an observatory and historical site, I nudge us in that direction.
“Are you sure, Althea? I mean, maybe we shouldn’t get too close until we have time to observe in the daylight.”
“Well, let’s just go check it out. The faces are on a flipping mountain. It’s way bigger than we can check out in a day, so what are the chances the Others are going to notice us, either? We’ll be careful, and if the historical site building is too close to the mountain, we’ll leave.”
“If it is safe, it should give us some shelter. Summer and I stayed in another historical site called Fort Laramie last winter. It had clothes and everything.”
Lucas considers, the setting sun surrounding his blond curls and giving him an otherworldly appearance. “Fine. Let’s go check it out, then.”
Pax catches me staring at Lucas and I quickly look away, clearing my throat and taking the lead with Greer at my side. It’s a long, winding, uphill trek to the observatory. Toppled columns, crumbled statues, and plaques line the walkway, and I make a mental note to come back to read some of them if we have the time.
Maybe it’s not important, but the knowledge might come in handy. Someday.
At the top of the sculpted path, a viewing deck spreads out in front of us, dirty and missing most of the guardrail that once lined the front. Now it drops pretty much straight down. The four of us stop, and the three of us with working brains stare for a good five minutes. The four faces stare back, keeping to themselves whatever secrets they have. I drop my gaze from the stunning, strange sight and scan the base of the mountain, but glimpse no movement in the trees or among the fallen rocks.
“I don’t see anything,” Pax remarks.
Lucas walks closer to the edge, and I bite my lip to keep from telling him to be careful. “Me either, but it’s getting dark. It would be hard to make out a single sentry.”
With my eyes closed, I take a deep breath and open my ears. The sounds of a spring evening meet me—trickling water, maybe runoff, hoots from the trees, and a chilly, sighing breeze—but nothing that indicates unnatural life. It doesn’t mean the Others aren’t close, but I don’t think any alarms have been tripped.
Wolf stands beside me, relaxed and unconcerned as he’s been all day long. “It’s probably okay for tonight. Tomorrow we’ll need to figure out exactly how to get into the Underground Core and whether or not we’re in danger here, but they’re not expecting us to stumble on this place. How would anyone if they didn’t know to come this way?”
“I’m sure that’s why they chose it,” Pax responds, peering over the ledge of the observation deck with Lucas.
“Would you two come away from there? You’re making me really nervous.”
They oblige, shooting each other amused smiles as they return to me and Greer. “Now what, Mom?” Pax asks, winking.
“Oh, shut up.” I look around and notice some stairs spiraling downward and out of sight. “Let’s try down there. All of the signs said there were a historical site and a gift shop and everything. They have to be around here somewhere.”
I walk Greer over to the stairs, but no matter how many times I tug her hand, she won’t step down. It pushes worry into my tired limbs— maybe she knows something we don’t about what lies at the bottom, but it’s more likely that navigating crumbling stone steps falls under the requires-too-many-fine-motor-skills category.
Energy falls out of me until it drips onto the steps. Lucas’s eyes take in my slumped shoulders, then move up to my face. He bends down and hoists Greer over his shoulder without a word. She doesn’t protest, doesn’t shriek or fight or bite him the way I imagine she would if he tried such a thing normally. She only hangs like a limp, towheaded scarf off his back, hair hanging down and covering his backside.
Pax and I follow the stairs to the bottom, where we find a building that used to have glass windows and probably even a door. It still has a roof, walls, and multiple rooms inside, but the glass front is long gone, even the shards ground into nearly nothing against the concrete. The silent stone faces watch us from their perch, sending shivers up my back until they reach like fingers into my hair. I don’t like them watching, I decide, even if their eyes are made of rocks.
We trudge to the back wall, which still has a few pictures and plaques hanging haphazardly on it, and Pax sets Greer down. She slumps on her side and closes her eyes. It’s cold in here without protection from the wind, which whips around us harder than it has in days as clouds continue to gather in the distance.
There’s no way we can make a fire, though, not while knowing there’s a nest of Wardens that includes Zakej and his banana-balls sister lurking nearby, so we drop everything next to Greer. Wolf tries to leave but I call him back, worried he’ll get caught now that the Others know I have him. After how they treated him last winter, there’s not a doubt in my mind they would hurt him simply because it would hurt me.
He flops next to me, eyes unhappy before he closes them. I stroke his head, my heart heavy. The poor dog isn’t meant to be cooped up, and he certainly isn’t meant to eat food out of a can, but right now there’s not much we can do. If there’s going to be a fight, we need to start thinking of how we can keep him safe and get him out of the way.
I sneak a glance at Greer. If she were herself again, we could leave Wolf with her.
We’re all silent, listening to the wind howling as we eat some tasteless beans. We didn’t bring much food. The backpacks only hold so much, and I wonder briefly if Pax assumed we’d be able to return to the cabin. In a rush of longing and sadness, I’m suddenly sure we’ll never have that kind of safety again.
Sleep comes without my realizing it, partially due to Lucas’s words and lips keeping me up until almost dawn. The blankets, combined with Wolf’s heat, keep me warm enough. Even though Lucas and Pax murmur in low voices, my eyes refuse to care. The fati
gue is hard to shrug off, even when the screaming starts.
CHAPTER 16.
Greer’s eyes, dark like plums, gush tears until her cheeks and neck and hair are soaked. She’s shrieking what sounds like Nat’s name. Over and over and over. Pax clamps his hand over her mouth, muffling the heart-piercing sound but not stifling it completely.
Wolf crawls next to her, but even his sturdy presence can’t distract her from whatever’s happening inside her mind. She can’t breathe very well through her nose, which is coursing snot onto Pax’s hand, and he lifts it from her mouth every few seconds to let her breathe. The noise is unbearable, and loud enough to be heard on another planet.
“We have to shut her up, Althea.” Pax’s face jerks with panic as he looks back at me. “You were at her sinum. How do we shut her up?”
“I don’t know! They’re attacking her somehow through the wall.”
It doesn’t make sense, I realize as soon as the words escape me. They can’t get through our walls.
“They’re torturing him. Natej.” Lucas’s voice is soft but sure.
Greer is sobbing his name over and over. Even though she can’t see outside her alcove, she can hear. The Others are vicious enough to hurt him within earshot to try to make her give herself up.
Without warning she goes limp again, staring blankly as tears leak from the corners of her eyes.
Pax lifts his hand experimentally, then rocks back on his heels when she stays quiet. “If that’s what they were doing, they must have taken a torture break.”
They both look to me as though I’m supposed to know how to help, how to stop this, because she and I are friends. A powerful helplessness grabs me, fists my hands at my sides. If there were someone in front of me to blame, to hit, I would smash them to pieces. The way things are, I’m not sure how to help her.
If they kill Nat because she won’t come back, and I’m the one who kept her away, she won’t ever forgive me. I think about her face when she talked about him, when she said she came to help me because of love, and I know without a doubt that she’d rather die with Nat than live without him.
It might be what she’s been waiting for in that prison cell all of these years.
“I’m going to talk to her. In the hive.”
“Althea, you can’t. They’ll be guarding her, and they know we helped. It’s too dangerous,” Lucas points out.
For once I don’t snap at him for telling me what to do. Because he’s right.
While my mind puzzles over how to go without getting caught, Pax comes to my rescue, ever my cohort when Lucas wants to shelter mefrom all the bad things. “She can. All she has to do is get through the barrier, and they can’t follow.”
“Lucas is right, though. If they think they can use Greer to catch us, they won’t make the same mistake twice. There will be a lot of them, and they’ll be ready.”
“But we need her to understand that no matter what they’re doing to her boyfriend, she’s going to get us killed if she freaks out,” Pax argues.
“She won’t care,” I say without a second thought. “Greer likes us, or at least I think she does, but she loves him. She’s spent years holed up in a marble prison all alone so she can steal a few hours with him here and there. She’s going to be pissed at us for keeping her captive while he’s dying and she can’t do anything to stop it.”
“You’re right. She’s going to hate you, and I’ll be the hero. Against my better judgment, of course.” The new voice nearly explodes my heart.
The three of us whirl around at the new voice, squinting in the weak morning light. Griffin offers a tired smile, which is hardly recognizable on his split, puffy lips. One arm is wrapped firmly around Nat’s waist, holding the handsome Warden upright. Nat’s eyes are swollen shut; black blood covers his neck and the collar of his tan uniform.
“What are you thinking, bringing him here?” I demand.
Griffin drops Nat in a heap, going to his sister. He brushes the hair off her forehead and when she doesn’t respond, he turns his eyes, flashing with rage, on me. “What did you do to her?”
“She saved her life.” Lucas steps between us, shielding me from the Sidhe’s wrath.
I step around him, shouldering him out of the way with a glare, and face Griffin.
“How? Tell me quick, Red, because the Wardens are on their way here as we speak.”
“I blocked her sinum in the hive with my element. They can’t get in, but I don’t know what it did to her mind,” I respond honestly. Whatever he thinks, it can’t hurt worse than the knowledge that I went against what Greer would have wanted.
I didn’t think it through at the time, but maybe we should have left her in the cemetery. Maybe Greer isn’t mine to save. Maybe she would have wanted to be with Nat.
Lucas is staring at me when my eyes slide to him. Would I want to be helpless if Lucas were in trouble, maybe dying?
I can’t think of anything worse.
“You trapped her in her mind. She’s there, but she can’t get out.” His mouth hardens into a line. “They’ve basically killed Romeo, there. They’ve been kicking the shit out of him since they learned about him and Greer, and going at it double time since she disappeared from their radar. And they know you’re helping her.”
“I thought his name was Nat?” It’s an irrelevant question, but it’s what’s stuck in the front of my mind.
“It is. Never mind. If we live another day I promise to tell you about Romeo and Juliet.” Griffin shoots to his feet, opening a portal to somewhere. By the panic on his face, I’m guessing anywhere that isn’t here will do. “Let’s go.”
“Wait. Why should we go with you? Take your sister and her boyfriend and go,” Pax suggests evenly.
“Because you all are the reason we’re in trouble, and Red here trapped my sister in her mind and turned her into a vegetable. And as soon as we get to the other side of this portal, she’s going to do the same thing to me and Natej.”
Before Pax can object again, I step through the portal and find myself back at the cabin, the one I was just thinking I would never see again. So much for my instincts.
The rest of the group, including Wolf, pop out of the shining circle a moment later. They lay Greer and Nat on the couch, and I turn to Griffin. “You want me to trap you in your head, too. Why?”
“Because now that Zakej knows about Greer and Nat, he’s going to kill them. And since I just helped Nat out of the Underground Core, they’re not going to let me live, either. This way they can’t find us, and one day in what I’m sure will be the very distant future, when the three of you wise up and figure out how to really use your powers, you can set us free.” He rubs a hand over his face and pinches the bridge of his nose, looking so tired it almost inspires forgiveness for his harsh words. “I could use a nap.”
“Fine. Show us where Nat’s alcove is first.” I keep thinking there must be another way, but there isn’t time to argue. We need to get them off the grid.
The four of us hold hands and close our eyes, and the strange addition of Griffin’s smooth, dark power crawls up my arm and into my chest. It’s heavy and unspecific, unlike our focused elemental abilities. It feels dark and ancient, dragging roots that have been sinking into the Earth for thousands of years.
I’m disoriented when we arrive in the hive, the foreign magic clouding my mind. Griffin’s halfway down the tunnel in front of us before I manage to get my feet moving. Lucas’s hand wraps around mine, tugging me forward until we’re all sprinting.
When we come to four Wardens guarding an inlet, Griffin punches one in the face while Pax blows another against the wall. Without thinking about the consequences, I engulf the last two in flames. Lucas seals the alcove with a thick sheet of ice, but before it closes completely I glimpse Nat rocking on his hands and knees in the middle of the room, vomiting buckets of black blood. The last thing I see is him collapsing facedown in his own mess, and my stomach sinks into my shoes.
It doesn’t seem like
he’s going to live, even if the Others never lay another hand on his body or his mind. Tears fill my eyes and I turn to say something to Griffin, but he’s already jogging away.
My feet work to catch up, and I pant next to him in the next couple of minutes while we run deeper into the tunnels, down low where I found Greer. “We could have put them together, at least. So they could have a few more moments.”
Griffin’s features darken, his purple eyes pinning me with arrogant exasperation. “It’s going to take you longer than forever to figure out how to save this planet if you can’t even figure out this hive, Red. If we put him with Greer, his sinum—part of his mind—would still be open to them. He’s probably dead anyway.”
He pulls to a stop in front of an inlet next Greer’s with its door of melted metal and steps inside. “Do it.”
“Wait. Tell us how to get into the Underground Core.” Lucas gulps air beside me, out of breath from the sprint, but I’m glad he and his thorough brain are here.
“Seal it. They’re coming.” Griffin’s eyes flick to the left, and the sound of pounding boots echo dully off the mud walls.
“No. Not until you tell us.” Pax draws up on my other side, and the three of us stand strong against the stubborn set of Griffin’s jaw.
I suspect the Sidhe knows that I’m too weak-stomached to let him get hurt or die, but the look on his face says he’s not so certain about either of the boys. “It’s around the back. There’s a garbage heap where they dump waste and old clothes, and the door is behind it, in the rock.”
“If you’re lying, I’m sending Althea in to melt this and leave you for dead.”
With that, Lucas sprays water into the opening and freezes it, then we all link hands and return to the cabin.
Our three brain-dead friends are staring silently , and it freaks me out more than a little bit. “How can we leave them here all defenseless? What if the Others come? They can’t get into their minds, but they can still kill their bodies.”