“We sh-should.” I paused to gather my breath. “We should keep traveling by rooftop while we can rather than descending,” I said. “We are too close to Hotel Tiberius. They’ll get us coming out.”
Ally gasped. “We’re running like fools. We’re just going to get ourselves killed.”
“I can get us away.”
“We can surrender instead,” Ally said. “They’ll let Jo go. They’ll have no reason to hold her. And you’re a sentinel. You’ll be able to talk your way out of been taken to the JC.”
“And you?” I asked.
“It’s better this way for me,” Ally said.
“Don’t listen to her,” Jo said. Her face was red and her breathing heavy. “They do horrible things to shades in the JC. I’m not going to let anyone take Ally there.” She gave me a stern look. “And you’re not going to either.”
“I don’t want to be the cause of anyone dying,” Ally said. “I don’t want to be another Dennis.”
It took me a moment to remember who Dennis was. Director Wells had used the fire summoning crystal to turn three orphans into shades: Katie, Ally, and Dennis. “What did he do?” I asked.
Jo rapped me on the shoulder with the side of her fist. “That isn’t relevant. We all know Ally isn’t capable of doing something like that.”
“We should all be locked up to keep us safe from ourselves. The power inside me can’t be trusted. I can’t be trusted.”
“That’s simply not true,” Jo said. “Tell her, Rune.”
I blinked, lost for a reply. Ally’s thoughts reflected what I’d recently been thinking about myself. The power inside me can’t be trusted. I can’t be trusted.
“Rune,” Jo insisted.
“We should keep going.” I stuck my head out to see what was going on behind us. Over a dozen officers were on the roof of the Tiberius; several were gathered around the door that led down into the hotel. The others were spread around the edge of the roof, their weapons ready in case another shade made a break for it. The bearded man was barking orders into a radio. One man sprinted past him and jumped from Tiberius onto the roof where we hid. They certainly hadn’t forgotten us.
“They have followed us across,” I said. “We have to keep moving. If I carry Jo, we’ll be able to travel faster.” I took another quick peek out, then lifted Jo up and ran toward the far end of the roof.
Once reaching the edge, I skidded to a stop. The roof opposite was higher and protected by a barrier, plus the gap to it was wider than before. Carrying Jo, I had no hope of making it. I might have been able to make the jump by myself. Might.
Ally came to a stop beside me. I looked behind to check for pursuers and didn’t see any close. “Maybe this way,” I said, racing along the edge of the roof, heading for the north-western corner. When I got close, I saw I had made a good solution. The building to the north angled away, but it was within jumping distance at that corner. I vaulted the barrier and prepared to make the leap.
“Rune!” Jo shouted. “Look, Ally’s in trouble.”
I swiveled to see an L-SED officer approaching her from the side. The officer lifted a net gun to his shoulder and fired. Ally, seeing the rapidly widening net coming her way, sprang to the left, but not quickly enough. The net tangled with her feet and tripped her up.
The officer placed his netgun on the ground, grabbed a crossbow that was strapped to his side and trained it on Ally. “Stay down,” he ordered.
I looked in frustration to the other roof and our chance to get away. The area could be flooded by L-SED officers by the time I rescued Ally and returned to this spot. “She wanted to be caught,” I told Jo.
“Rune.” Jo could express an amazing amount of disapproval just in the way she pronounced my name.
I sighed. “Wait here.” I jumped back over the barrier, then paused as a halo of red light exploded out from around Ally.
The officer scrambled back, the crossbow falling from his hands. Ally disentangled her legs from the net and stood. Though a trail of blood leaked down the side of her face, she showed no pain, only anger, her face compressed into hard lines. She raised her palms before her, and a stream of fire shot outward.
The officer fell backward, and the fire whooshed over him. He clawed at the ground, scrambling back.
“You want me so badly.” Ally strode after him. “Here I am.” By her side, her arms were slightly bent, her fingers splayed back, and tendrils of fire leaking from her fingertips.
“Maybe I don’t have to go back,” I said to Jo. “She has the situation under control.”
“Does she look under control to you?” Jo asked. “I feared something like this more than I feared her being caught. Save him from her.”
“He was trying to capture us. Why save him?”
“Ally, leave him be!” Jo shouted past me, then she grabbed my arm. “Rune, don’t let her. Some things can’t be undone. You know what it’s like to have regrets.”
That I did. “Don’t move,” I told Jo, then sprinted toward the L-SED officer, who still lay on his back. He had given up retreating and instead tried to pick his crossbow where he had dropped it. It kept fumbling out of his fingers.
Ally hands lit up as a fireball formed. I summoned my fireswords and threw myself in the path of the fire. The blast of power knocked me back on top of the officer. I scrambled off of him and back to my feet, crossing my fireswords in front of me.
Sparks of fire spiraled upward from Ally’s hair. “I expected as much,” she said. “You were always my enemy. I just had to wait for you to reveal yourself.”
“It’s not like that.” Beside me, the L-SED officer raised his weapon and started to aim it. I kicked him in the hand, and the crossbow spilled free. “I’m helping you escape, Ally, remember?”
“You are protecting those who want to harm me.” Yellow flame burst from her hands, and I held my fireswords high, bracing myself against another buffeting of power. I had fought and defeated the fire sorcerer, Yarley. And amazingly, Ally, still a child, had more raw power than him.
“Ally, stop,” Jo said. “You don’t want to do this.”
Jo hadn’t stayed where I left her and instead walked straight toward Ally. “Jo, get back!” I screamed. Nathan had said Ally was unstable, but I had never imagined she could be this dangerous.
“Listen to him. Stay away,” Ally said, an unchildlike growl in her voice. Her face glowed orange from the flames on her hands.
“I know you,” Jo said. “Ally, this isn’t you.”
“You don’t know me.” Ally continued, “You know the girl who once possessed this body. I have fought a hundred battles and won each time.”
Jo continued to approach, unmindful of the fire. Although Jo was bigger than Ally, she looked small and vulnerable close to the nimbus of flame that surrounded Ally.
“Jo, don’t.” I held my swords ready but didn’t advance. I was ready to spring forward to try to protect her, but I was on Ally’s other side, and I didn’t want to spook the girl into action.
“Ally, I know you don’t want to harm me.” Jo kept walking. “Your power is not needed.”
I held my breath, but Jo was not burned. Instead, the fires quenched before her, and by the time Jo reached her side, Ally’s flames had completely disappeared. The hard lines of anger on the girl’s face melted into despair, and she buried her head into her hands and wept. “I didn’t mean for that to happen.”
Jo wrapped her hands around Ally. “I know you didn’t.”
“It wells up inside me,” Ally said. “Anger, exploding emotion. Constantly churning, eating up my willpower. I try to contain it, I try so hard.”
“I know you do.”
Hearing a noise, I swiveled around in time to see the officer who Ally had attacked slither behind a chimney stack. Across the roof, more L-SED officers were advancing, taking up positions to surround us.
I scooped the crossbow off the ground, then put my hand on Jo’s shoulder, causing Ally and Jo to break apart. �
��We have to get out of here. Quickly.”
I put my arm around Jo’s waist and lifted her up, then dashed back to the north-west corner. This time, I jumped before I reached the barrier, landing my right foot onto the top of the barrier. My knee bent, then I kicked out across the gap. I didn’t time my kick off perfectly and thus didn’t get as much lift as I expected. My stomach lurched as the chasm opened up beneath me. My legs spun in midair as I ached for every bit of momentum. It wasn’t me I was worried about; I’d survived bigger falls. But I wasn’t sure I’d be able to protect Jo.
My left foot landed on the edge of the roof.
Just.
I stumbled forward a few steps, then came to a stop, putting Jo down. I turned back to check on Ally. One part of me feared that Ally had decided not to follow and instead given herself up, another part of me hoped that had happened. However, she landed cleanly just behind me and kept racing. I looked back at Hotel Tiberius, getting an idea of how far we had come, then looked at the crossbow in my hand. We couldn’t keep running like this. Already, Ally had lost control, and I had almost fallen three stories with Jo in my arms.
“Ally, hold up!” I called out.
She slowed.
“Jo, you and Ally look for a way to descend. This building is far enough away from Tiberius that you’ll have a good chance of getting away if you get to ground level.”
“What about you?” Jo asked.
“I’ll hold them off long enough for you to get away, then figure something out. Go.”
“Rune.”
“There’s no time to argue!” I shouted. “Go, go.”
Fly, you fools, Jerome thought.
Quoting Gandalf is a bit grandiose, I thought back.
Jo took one final reluctant look at me, then ran on ahead to Ally and took her hand. The two of them continued forward.
“Hey!” I shouted out. I lifted the crossbow and aimed it across the gap toward the nearest L-SED officer. “I know you guys are good at jumping, but I don’t think you’ll be ready to fight when you land with a crossbow in your gut.” In response, two officers raised their crossbows and fired at me.
I dodged across to the side, seeking cover behind a small wall. I peeked over the top, watching as the officers ran hunched over from one point of shelter to the next, gradually getting closer. With them dodging back and forth, it was hard to get an exact count, but it had to be over a dozen. Because this building was at an angle to the one on the other side, they could only cross at this corner, creating a bottleneck. If I could delay them long enough to give Ally and Jo a decent head start, I was confident that I could outrun them. Even if the way they could jump suggested supernatural abilities.
The officer with the thick beard who’d shot down Ringo was prominent among those approaching. “Hey, Beardy, what do you want?” I shouted out. “Can’t we be friends? I just saved one of your men. And I’m not a shade.”
“Sure!” Beardy shouted back. “Throw away the crossbow and lie face down on the ground. Then we’ll be great friends.”
I was surprised that he was willing to talk but happy to indulge him. The longer we wasted shouting back and forth, the more chance Ally and Jo had of getting away. “I’m not your enemy. I’m a sentinel. Your boss, Elizabeth Lowndes, knows me. She wouldn’t want to see me shot.”
“I saw the swords, and I know what multani look like!” Beardy shouted. “But we both know that fire sentinels are not the good kind. I also saw the fire witch that you are protecting.”
“That was just a misunderstanding,” I said.
“I prefer dealing with people where misunderstandings don’t result in stray fireballs.” He stepped out from behind cover and gave me a big grin.
“Why are you smiling like that? I don’t get the joke.”
He nodded behind me, and I turned to see an L-SED officer with a net gun pointed at me. “Oh,” I said.
The gun fired, and I was swallowed up in metal netting.
Chapter 6
Tuesday 14:35
I fell hard.
With my hands pinned to my side, I was unable to protect myself as my shoulder slammed into the ground. My forehead whiplashed against the concrete. Spots marred my vision, and I blinked several times to clear my head. I rolled, trying to get away, but the man who’d shot me pulled on the net, yanking me back and contorting my body, trapping my left wrist behind my back. My forearm was shoved under my neck.
I rocked to the side and managed to free my right hand, squeezing it out between the metal wires of the netting. I created a loose fist and tried to summon a firesword. Of course, nothing happened—with most of my body trapped in titanium, just freeing my forearm would have little effect. I ground my teeth in frustration. I was as helpless as a hogtied lamb; I could only hope that I’d delayed the L-SED long enough for the two girls to escape. And hope that Ally was right that, as a sentinel, I wouldn’t be harmed by them. Though the last time I’d met Elizabeth Lowndes, that hadn’t helped Robert Bobbit; the opposite, in fact, for he’d been executed for being a fire sentinel.
Black boots marched past my nose. I twisted around so that I was on my back, ignoring the pain of wires cutting into my skin. Beardy, flanked by two of his men, stopped in front of me.
The officer took one hand off the net and snapped a sharp salute. “Sergeant Taylor, we have him.”
Beardy—Sergeant Taylor—cast a disinterested look my way. “Good work, Grailes. Any luck with the others? He had two girls with him, at least one a fire witch.”
“Not yet, sir,” Grailes said. “We have begun searching the building.”
“Additionally, post men on each side of the roof to watch the streets below. I have ordered a troop on the ground to intercept.”
“What about him. Will I have—”
“Release him.”
“Sir?”
“The Colonel wants to talk to him.”
“I can have him taken down to her,” Grailes said.
“No need. He’s not stupid enough to run.”
How little he knows you, Jerome thought.
Is that all you are good for? Popping up with cheap insults?
What more to you expect? Jerome thought. Tap dancing? Gymnastics?
Grailes looked down at me, clearly reluctant to follow the command.
I tried on a cheeky smile. “You heard the great bearded one. Release me.”
The officer scowled as he tugged on a few strands of the net, loosening it. Once I felt a bit of give, I pushed outward.
“Stop struggling,” Grailes ordered. “You are just making it worse.”
Realizing he was right, I stilled and waited until he fully untangled me from the net. I then stood and wiped dust off my clothes. Blood leaked from my neck where the wires had broken skin. “What’s your badge number, Grailes? I’m going to report you. Police brutality.”
Grailes scowl deepened.
“Go to your duty, soldier,” Sergeant Taylor ordered.
Grailes saluted and turned on his heel.
“You, come,” Sergeant Taylor said, heading toward the center of the roof.
I hesitated, then hurried to fall in alongside him. “You called Grailes a soldier, and your boss is a colonel,” I said. “Your veneer of being law enforcement is rather thin.”
Taylor simply grunted.
“If not law enforcement, then what? Private armies are illegal, right?”
In response, Sergeant Taylor merely picked up his pace, forcing me to hurry to keep up with him. Just behind us, two officers followed, crossbows dangling from their belts. Beyond them, the other officers worked with military-style precision and coordination in bringing equipment, setting up sentry stations and keeping a watch on what was happening on the streets below.
Zip-lines were strung between the roofs at various points, and the officers used these to transport equipment. And from seeing where zip-lines had been set up, I could understand how I had been captured. While I had been focused on the northwestern corner, a
zip-line had been installed further down, allowing Grailes to cross. While I’d thought I was the smart one by bantering with Sergeant Taylor, thinking I was delaying him and giving Ally and Jo a chance to escape, Taylor had been distracting me.
“Not everyone can get a gold medal for intelligence,” I said.
“What did you say?” Sergeant Taylor asked.
“Not everyone can get a gold medal. Because then the medal would lose its value.”
He gave me a pitying look.
I watched the L-SED officers move across roofs. With the zip-lines in place, no one needed to jump the gaps between the roofs as Ally and I had done. At least some of them were capable of it, though; I hadn’t imagined that. Several had done so in the heat of the battle, including Taylor himself. The L-SED was much more than titanium weapons and military tactics.
“Gold medal for long jump, though,” I said. “One of those for everyone in the audience.”
“Unlike many similar forces, we ensure our men stay well-trained and fit,” Taylor said. He pushed through a rooftop door and descended a small set of stairs. I followed. We emerged into a rather dingy-looking hallway. Taylor pushed the button for the elevator.
“So,” I said. “Nice beard. How do you get it so thick?”
He ignored me.
“Fertilizer? Slurry? Or just pure manliness. Hairiness is manliness, as they say.”
“No one says that,” he barked.
“Maybe they should.”
Taylor snorted. “Manliness. What would you—” The elevator opened, and we both stepped inside.
“You were saying?” I said.
He shook his head. “Nothing.” He pressed the button for the ground floor.
“So, medieval weapons, huh. What’s that about? Crossbows. Did you arrive last at the supply centre, and they had already given the real weapons to the real soldiers?”
“We are…” With visible effort, he controlled his sharp tone. “We use the weapons we do for very good reasons. Normal metal doesn’t do much good against Brimstone scum. Titanium makes shit bullets. It’s not dense enough, for a start. It’s too hard to spin properly, so it would be inaccurate, and that hardness also means it wouldn’t expand on impact. Just shit in every way, and titanium is the only substance known to affect shades, God knows why. Plus, having the length of a crossbow bolt stuck in the body of a shade is much more effective than a small bullet. The more titanium, the greater the effect.
Fire Soldiers Page 4