I shuddered, because I knew exactly who that voice belonged to. Brula. And she was angry.
“Because, if you’re not, it’ll cost you and that pretty wife of yours both your heads.”
Conrad, one of Brula’s advisors, if I remembered my government names correctly, answered back. “No need to fear, Your Graciousness. Your people are well trained and will have this matter in hand within the minute.”
“Fear?” Brula’s voice cracked upward. “Do I look afraid, Conrad? Do I come off as the type of ruler who cowers in a corner to you? Is that what you’re implying?”
“Oh…oh no,” he answered quickly. “Not at all, Your Wondrous Vastness. I simply meant that—”
“That you’re a fool with no regard for the content of the words that leave your mouth?” she answered. “Now listen to me, you sniveling little ant. I don’t care about the guardsman. I don’t care about the prisoners. I don’t even care about this castle. They can all be replaced. But she can’t.”
“Of course, Your Extra Specialness,” Conrad answered.
“Regent will do,” she barked. “I am achingly close to transferring. You know that, Conrad. And I can’t just transfer into any body. It doesn’t work that way anymore. We’ve scoured this entire sector. We’ve looked in all of its corners. She’s the only one who will work. So you will sacrifice everything that you have to. But understand this, Conrad. Failure will not be permitted. You will bring me that farm girl, and I will have her body as my own.”
“Oh no,” I muttered as Brula’s words sank like stones into my gut. “Gemma.”
Chapter 14
The words that Brula spoke seared into me like a branding iron. They cut right through my defenses and left me a mess of worry and agitation.
This was worse than anything I could have imagined. Brula wasn’t just harvesting witches. She was searching for the right person to take over. She was looking for her next holy vessel, and, somehow, she’d found it in my sister.
I couldn’t let this happen.
Suddenly, I felt a sharp tug at my ankle.
Panicking, I tried to pull myself away from it, but it was no use.
The hand had me. It whipped me out of my crawlspace and deposited me right onto the floor of the darkened hallway.
Throwing my hands in front of me, I let the power running through me course up into my palms.
Blinking hard, I looked up, seeing Henrick standing over me.
“Calm down,” he said, looking down at me. “We have to move. You said five minutes.”
“I don’t give a damn what I said,” I spat back, scrambling to my feet. “I’m not leaving here without my sister.”
“You won’t have to,” Henrick answered. “I’ve been in touch with a few of my people. They think they pinpointed a second set of cells. They’re on the far side of the center, kept away from these. If your sister isn’t here, then that’s the only place she could be.” He swallowed hard. “But we have to be quick. The center’s engineers are working hard to bring the power back on. Once they do that, it’s only a matter of time before everyone in this facility is back behind bars.”
A loud shriek filled the air. Someone had just been hurt badly, likely even killed. It wasn’t Gemma. But it just as well could have been.
Henrick was right. We needed to get moving.
“Lead the way,” I said, following as Henrick darted off in front of me.
He was fast, but I was getting faster. It must have been the adrenaline, because I was still tired, still hungry, and definitely still barefoot. But knowing that Gemma was out there was enough to keep me putting one foot in front of the other.
He made a hard right, and then the first left. We narrowly dodged a set of guardsmen who moved toward us in a uniformed line.
He pulled to a stop when we reached another turn.
“It’s there,” he said.
“Where?” I asked.
He pointed downward. At that point, I was able to fully take in just what I was looking at.
We stood at the precipice of a huge valley.
The floor dropped off severely just a few feet past where we were standing. In the middle of that valley, suspended in what looked to be midair, was a row of metal boxes.
Gemma was here. I knew it in my gut.
The doors of those boxes, like all the doors in the center, had popped open in the pulse that left us in the dark. But I saw no one in the doorways. Which meant one of two things—that the doors opened and those poor souls inside, not knowing their cells hung in the air like floating buoys, rushed out and fell off to their deaths…or they knew enough to stay put.
Gemma was still in one of those cells…or she had already been reduced to broken bones and pools of blood on the ground.
My heart seemed to pound as I stood there, looking down and yearning for an answer.
“How do we—”
“We jump,” Henrick said.
“Are you insane?” I asked. “Can’t you see how far that is? We can’t jump. It’ll—”
The lights flickered back on, leaving me cold.
We were exposed, standing there in the middle of a warzone. Our one advantage—being able to see in the dark when our enemies couldn’t—was just made as obsolete as a wet parachute.
“We jump,” Henrick repeated, grabbing my hand.
“No, we don’t,” I said, cording my fingers along his. “We slide.”
With my free palm, I unleashed my energy. It poured down into the abyss, creating an ice slide like the one Gemma and I had used to get away from the flames.
Henrick’s eyes went wide, though I wasn’t sure why. He had seen me fight off a ravager; did he think I was just some random farm girl who couldn’t defend herself?
Guardsmen rounded the corner, pinning their eyes on us and readying their weapons.
“Let’s go,” I yelled and jumped off the cliff, pulling him down with me, our hands still intertwined.
A buzz of energy whizzed past our heads as we fell into the open air. We both hit hard against the ice and slid faster than I anticipated. I winced as I heard the shriek of energy slamming into the ice ramp, hitting all the spots around us.
Beside me, Henrick cried out. When I looked over at him, I saw his shoulder was pouring blood and his jaw was set tightly.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
“The ramp,” he said, looking past me. “Extend the damn ramp!”
My head snapped back forward. My free palm jutted outward, and I began to form more ice.
But the guardsmen were onto me. They kept shooting at everything I created, and I couldn’t form it fast enough to stop them from destroying it.
We were going to fall. We were going to become the splatter marks I hoped Gemma wasn’t.
And there wasn’t anything I could do about it.
“Henrick,” I said. Just saying his name conveyed everything I wanted it to.
“Take my hand,” he said, much calmer than he had any right to be.
“I’ve got your hand,” I answered.
“My other hand,” he said. “You’re going to need to hold both my hands. This is usually pretty rough on other people.”
I had no idea what the ‘this’ in question was. But I didn’t care. As before, it wasn’t as if I had a whole lot to lose at this point.
I grabbed his hand, and he pulled me closer to him. Before I knew what was happening, I was atop him, pressed against his body in a big bear hug.
“What are you doing?” I asked as I felt the heat of him against me, a huge contrast to the cool ice that surrounded us.
“I’m either saving us or killing us. I guess we’ll see.” His eyes took on a bright sunlight orange; they were filling with energy.
He had abilities, too. Of course he did. People didn’t get a job at the wall by being an ordinary, everyday citizen of the sector. But for some reason, this was just striking me now. I’d never actually seen him use any abilities.
“Hold tight,” he
said, his breath falling warm against my cheek. And it was too warm, as though it was the exhaust of a tractor. Still, something about it was comforting. “Can you do that? Can you hold onto me tighter than you’ve ever held onto anything?”
“I can try,” I answered as we neared the end of the ramp…as we slid toward certain death.
My arms wrapped around his back, and I clasped my hands together behind him.
His arms, strong and corded with muscle, covered the small of my back and held me firmly.
“Let’s hope your try is good enough,” he said.
With a sharp jerk, he spun us around. We were now sliding face-first toward the drop off. And I could see just how quickly it was approaching.
“Henrick,” I shouted.
“Here we go!”
A loud boom emanated from somewhere very close, close enough that, for a moment, I thought it was coming from him directly.
And then, I knew it was.
A rush of heat covered me, and, like a rocket, Henrick and I took off.
He pulled into the sky around the dangling cells, driven by some unseen force.
Beneath us, a pool of sunlit energy wrapped around his legs and feet, propelling him upward. And it was way too fast.
He yelled something I couldn’t understand.
“What?” I asked, tightening up against him even more now that I knew why it was necessary.
“Pull me down,” he said.
My heart jumped.
He expected me to steer him?
“I don’t know how,” I admitted.
He looked down at me, his face inches from my own.
“Just pull me closer,” he said.
I did as he asked, wrapping my legs around the small of his back and finally understanding why he was so damn hot. I pressed myself against him, pulling him tighter so that our faces were practically touching now.
I felt him on me, his lips against my cheek, his nose rubbing my ear.
“It’s going to be fine,” he whispered to me. “Just close your eyes.”
I listened, grateful to do so, and he spun me around quickly, so that he was on the bottom now. Suddenly, we slammed against the top of the line of cells.
When we skidded to a stop, I smelled the scent of burned cloth and flesh. He was beneath me when my eyes opened, black dust on his face as though he’d been working with exhaust fumes. But he was smiling, which meant we must still be alive.
“I think I got some of my blood on you,” he said, his eyes moving down my shirt.
“I’ll survive,” I answered.
“That remains to be seen.”
One of the cells shook. Looking up, I saw that the guardsmen had taken aim at our new landing pad. They were blasting at us. With each hit, the dangling cells swung in the air like pendulums.
They shot again, and the far one swung wildly.
I heard a scream come from inside it—a familiar scream—and I rocketed to my feet.
“It’s Gemma,” I yelled, turning to Henrick, who was also standing now. His shirt was burned and smoking. Most of his chest was exposed.
I blinked hard.
“Gemma’s over there,” I said, pointing. “We have to get to her!”
Then, looking back up, I saw that the guardsman had brand-new toys. They were now straddling some kind of bikes. Flying bikes.
And they were headed this way.
“Oh, come on,” I yelled.
Henrick settled beside me. “We have to get out of here, Razz. Now.”
“Not without my sister,” I repeated, pulling my gaze from the flying guardsmen and leveling it at Henrick.
He was obviously tired and more than a little bit worn. It seemed that using his abilities the way he just had took a lot out of him. But there was no time for rest. Not for me or for him. Not yet anyway.
“Can you get to her?” I asked, motioning toward the cell where I had heard Gemma’s voice.
“Probably, but I’m not doing it,” he said.
I spun my body toward him, glowering. “What the hell do you mean you’re not doing it?”
“I’m not leaving you to die,” he said. “I don’t care how much you want your sister to be safe.”
“Is that what you think?” I asked, letting the power inside of me flare up until it caused my entire body to glow with a bright blue shine.
Screaming, I thrust my hands forward. Icy spikes flew toward the flying bastards.
Two of my icicles hit the flying machines, bursting them into flames and sending them spiraling downward. The guardsmen on them dropped down to the hard, harsh grave they no doubt were expecting us to occupy.
“There are more than two,” Henrick said, motioning to the five more guardsmen who were moving toward us.
“Not for long,” I said. I waved him forward. “Now get to Gemma!”
Henrick rushed off, running at first and then blasting off again. He disappeared from view as one of the guardsmen fired at me. Without time to duck out of the way, I whipped up a quick ice shield.
It shattered into countless pieces as the energy blast hit it, but it took the brunt of the force and gave me enough time to mount a response.
I threw my hands forward again. This time, I had no interest in taking these things out one by one. That would take longer than I had at the moment. They would be on me before I could do that.
So, instead, I focused my power everywhere.
It took a lot out of me, more than I thought I had, but I gritted my teeth and expanded the range of my powers. It pushed out farther than I imagined it could go, and, before I knew what was happening, I created an icy blizzard the like of which had never existed in the sector.
Even the worst summer storms had nothing on the ice behemoth I was now unleashing on these guardsmen.
At first, I was afraid it wouldn’t be enough. After all, they were so close to me. But then one of them turned right into another, knocking them both out of the sky. Another fell off his vehicle, and a fourth slammed into the far wall.
That left just one more…and he was still coming.
I pushed my power again, creating an ice block and throwing it in the last remaining guardsman’s direction. The soldier dodged it quickly, landing alongside of me and jumping off his bike. Before I could stop him, he landed a series of hard punches to my face and chest, sending me tumbling to the floor.
I tried to stand, but he kicked me hard in the gut, knocking the wind out of me. A swift, merciless boot landed against my windpipe, pinning me in place and stealing the air from my body.
His hand went to his helmeted head.
“I’ve made contact. Send enforceme—”
The guardsman’s eyes got big, and then he fell back, losing his balance and falling off the dangling cell to the ground below. I looked away just as his body impacted with a sickening crunch to the ground below. I winced, and my stomach churned.
“Are you okay?” came the most wonderful, familiar voice.
I looked up to find Gemma standing over me. She had a metal pipe in her hand, something she had likely pried off the side of her cell when the lights went out. She looked tired and angry. But she didn’t seem to be hurt. Even if she was, she was still alive. And that mattered the most.
“Thank the regent,” I said, jumping to my feet and scooping her into my arms. Tears began to flood my field of vision.
“Not this one,” I heard Henrick mutter from beside me. “Not this regent.”
Before I could spend too much time celebrating this small victory, Henrick pulled at my shoulder.
“Incoming,” he said flatly.
Turning, I saw them. More flying guardsmen. Five, then ten, then twenty, then an armada of them started toward us. No way in hell did I have enough energy left to deal with them.
Shit. Now what?
Chapter 15
“Hang on tight,” Henrick said, motioning to both Gemma and me.
“No,” I said. “You hang on tight to me.” I looked up. “Get me
up to that ceiling.”
“We’ll crush ourselves against it,” Henrick said.
“We won’t,” I answered, remembering the door that Gemma and I shattered in my housing quarters. “I can take care of that.” I looked over at the guardsmen. “I can take care of them, too.”
Truth was, I had no idea if I could or not, but I had to. Standing around wasn’t exactly a viable option.
Gemma grabbed hold of Henrick, wrapping her arms around his back.
Then he took me, pressing himself firmly against my body. “Ready?”
“We’ll see,” I said.
With a whoosh, he took off.
Gemma gasped, but I didn’t have the time to comfort her. One of my hands went out above me, toward the ceiling. The other went down, toward the guardsmen flying up to meet us.
And I let loose with everything I had left. Most of my remaining energy went up, and ice covered the ceiling, making it fragile and breakable. The rest of my magic created a thin ice barrier around the room. It wouldn’t be enough to stop them, and it wouldn’t hold forever, but all I needed was a little more time. Slowing them down would have to do.
“What now?” Henrick asked, looking at me with those severe eyes.
“Go faster than you’ve ever gone before.”
He grinned. “Yes, ma’am.”
A strong jerk whipped my head back, and we careened toward the top. A spike of fear rose in me, but it didn’t last for long. Within the second, we had shattered the ceiling.
The cool night air rushed at me, and the open expanse of the sector came to meet us.
We were free.
I had Gemma, and we were free.
“This doesn’t look right,” I said, watching as Henrick brought in the last of ‘our’ things.
It had been three days since we’d escaped from the center and Brula’s clutches. And nothing had gotten any easier.
My entire life had to be upended. We had, after all, run away from the sole ruler of the sector, the only real law this place had ever seen. It would only make sense that she would be looking for us—or, more specifically, Gemma. As crazy as it seemed, the most powerful woman any of us had ever known was looking for my baby sister.
Under: an Adult Dystopian Paranormal Romance: Sector 5 (The Othala Witch Collection) Page 11