Storm’s lips quirk again. “I appreciate that.” I pop off the couch quickly and am almost to the door when Storm’s voice calls me back. “One more thing, Lucy. Shane will drive you and Margot to your last exams. Jared has been reassigned. Shane will be your new main school security.”
I swivel on my heels. “Why?” The word explodes from me, more revealing than I’d intended.
The ice and metal of Storm’s eyes lend me no clues as he shrugs. “He’s got an impressive background and skillset, as well as seeming to care a great deal about you and Margot, I want to give him room to earn my trust.”
“Oh,” I choke out, and turn back to the door so that Storm can’t see the flaming heat of my face. My mind leaps into sorting the various possibilities, but they’re like scattered pieces of a puzzle I can’t solve.
Did Shane report Jared and me to Storm? Does Storm know that Jared and I… My thoughts veer off. What would he even know? I don’t know what we are, and though it was a big enough deal to me, what does fooling around mean to Jared?
Another thought drops through my brain like an unwelcome guest. Did Jared want to be reassigned? And if he did, why?
Love, I think in despair.
15
I stare out the windows of Storm’s car. The streets of Dominion are strange and blank. Blank like me. The hurt in my chest keeps blossoming, unfurling with every block. Absently I rub at the spot in my chest where it feels like my heart has been ripped out. I feel a pinch on my arm, though no hands touch me.
Margot.
I gaze over at my sister. She looks bright as sunshine on the other side of the back seat. Her hair is pulled into a severe ponytail, exposing the high, long line of her neck and the fragile bones of her cheeks. The mirror image of myself. I don’t know what to say. I can’t share without giving away all my secrets. So when my lip starts to quiver, my eyes blinking back rain, I pretend to look terribly interested in the drab morning scene.
It looks like every other day in this dying city.
From the corner of my eye, I spy a Laster on the street. The man puts out a hand to brace himself against a wall. Not long for this world, I reckon. I watch him shake just before he doubles over, an arm slashing over his bloated, empty stomach. I am about to turn away, not able to take a second more of the misery to be found in the streets, when a figure steps out from the shadow.
I would have known what he was even without the long robe flowing down over his long torso. On his face is a stamp: red circles, conjoined in the middle. Not an ordinary preacher man, then. A Watcher. He steps behind the Laster, a hand outstretched, perhaps to comfort the dying man.
“Margot,” I murmur, sitting up straighter. But by then we’ve cruised past the scene, and I will never know what it was the Watcher was going to do. Margot’s eyes are curious as I look over. Watcher. I mouth the word, not sure I want to say it out loud.
Margot’s eyes go wide as she realizes what I’ve said. They’ve been in hiding, or so we thought. So we’ve been told. So what does it mean that the Watchers are on the streets again?
What does it mean that we haven’t been told?
The hair on the back of my neck stands at attention. I receive the double prick of Margot’s, a gnawing knot of anxiety that grips my gut. Within the flicker of an eyelash, Margot and I have made a pact of silence. We’ll wait until we’re alone to discuss this. The car pulls to a stop, and Shane glances at us through the rearview.
“Everything all right, girls?”
“Fine,” we singsong. The door locks open and we pile out, blinking against a gray-white sky.
Shane frowns at us as he steps around. “You know you should wait until I’m door side.”
We know the drill. It’s protocol to let the mercs escort you from the car to the doors of the school. But something is going on today. Not the least, I reckon as I look around, is how far away from the Academy we’ve stopped.
We can see the school through the gaps in the buildings, but it’s still a good three blocks away. Barricades stretch across the necks of streets, fencing us in, each topped with barbed wire.
“What’s going on, Shane?” Margot asks. I can’t swallow past the lump of fear in my throat.
Shane shrugs and sweeps an expert eye at the rooftops. “Bomb threat, I reckon.” He flicks an impatient finger at us, but his face tightens into a scary mask. “Let’s get moving, girls. I don’t like you being out in the open like this.”
Margot bends down and pulls up her right sock. “Coming,” she says. Slowly she stands tall, her eyes casting a hooded look at me.
Something is wrong. We both sense it.
Just one other car has pulled up ahead of ours. It’s too soon to know who will spill out. But we don’t like the eerie quiet of the streets. The blue uniforms of the school’s security blaze behind the barricades. Our heels make funny clackity-clack sounds on the pavement as we scurry toward them, Shane’s heavy tread carrying behind us. Maybe that’s why we don’t hear anything. A long foot emerges from the shadows. Then a leg, a torso. Then a head.
And a gun.
The man stands there as though he’s not got a care in the world. And maybe he doesn’t. His cheeks are heavily pockmarked. That hasn’t stopped him from coloring his face with the insignia of the Watchers, though on this man it looks like he might have drawn it in with red lipstick without a mirror. Part of one circle is smudged, and when he smiles, it stretches back across his cheek. It’s a yellow-toothed smile. One tooth is missing from his lower jaw, so that he looks lopsided and comical as much as terrifying.
“Girls,” Shane barks from behind us. Margot and I pedal to a full stop. “Get behind me.”
The man steps forward. One step, another. His gun butts forward like an eager nose, long and thin. Still, the man says nothing, does nothing. Shane shoves us behind him.
“We’ve no quarrel with you,” he tells the Watcher in his gruffest tones. With one hand he holds us at his back. The other hand raises in peace.
Margot pinches my arm, and I turn. She points to the roof on the building opposite. Sniper.
The shots whistle down around our ears, but they aren’t meant for us, I realize. They’re meant for the blue-clad Academy’s men who run toward us in zigzagging lines, shouting. From the side street, a dozen or so Watchers emerge, all of them as scraggly and worn as the man before us. All are anointed with what looks like fresh war paint on their cheeks.
“Shane,” Margot whimpers. Her voice falls to a whisper as she and I both realize what’s happening.
We’ve just sprung a trap.
…
“Mar.” I hurriedly dig through my bag. “Get your phone. Call Storm.” I try doing the same. My fingers fly over the buttons as more shots are fired between the roof and the school. I look up in time to watch a man crumple to the ground fifty feet ahead. Frantic now, I dial the numbers.
The phone takes an eon to connect the number. Then Alma’s voice comes on the line. “Hello, Lucy.”
“Alma, we’re under—”
That’s all I have time for before an explosion rocks the building the sniper had been standing on and the top corner of it evaporates before our eyes. A massive shelf of mortar and cement slides down from the building with a bone-jarring, earth-trembling crash. Tidal waves of ash and debris close over our heads, and we gasp for air in the deafening roar. Margot’s arms are around me, our faces pressed against each other’s necks to protect each other from the dust.
A rough hand is a talon at my shoulder. It rips me from Margot’s embrace. I lean forward and kick blindly, satisfied when I connect with something hard. The talon softens but doesn’t let go. It aches when I twist, but twist I do, meeting a Watcher face-to-face. The hair prickles on my arms as I stare into crazed eyes, streaked with red and coated with dust. His skin is rubbled and ruined, pocked with blood and ash. I bring my elbow up and dig into the hollow chest. The man grunts and steps back in surprise. It’s enough time for me to yell, “Margot, run!” Th
en he starts for me again.
Margot coughs. Clouds of dust erupt from her, as though she’s learned to spit smoke. She shakes her head. Reaches out her hand. In a split second, I catch a glimpse of Shane wrestling with two Watchers, though they’re not the kind of preachers’ kin I’ve ever seen before. Their arms are as muscled as a merc’s, their legs long and powerful under their tunics. I can’t see Shane’s face, but the Watchers seem almost amused as he bats at them, swinging fiercely. And there is something comical about the way Shane is holding them off, something exaggerated and strange as he flips one over his back as easily as flipping an egg—
No time. I grab Margot’s hands. We go like bats toward the thickest of the dust clouds, hoping for a bit of cover. The man’s long arm reaches for me again, nicking my shoulder. I thrust my arm up to break his hold. Between that and Margot’s momentum, it’s enough to break us free.
The ground beneath our feet is like a minefield as we skip over chunks of concrete and brick, shattered glass and twisted metal poles. No one shoots at us as we make our way to the mess in the square, but the debris slows us down. Margot chances a look behind us, her lips pursing.
“Almost,” she croaks through a mouthful of dust. They’re behind us then, and closing fast. I sweep the streets for somewhere to hide.
“Black door,” I tell her, pointing with my eyes rather than my finger. No need to give ourselves away. We scramble over a pile of rocks, staying low to the ground. At the top, I pause to take in a scene of chaos. A gun war still blazes between the school and the rooftop snipers, who pick off the Academy’s mercs like so many flies on a wall. I spy the rocket launcher near the Grayguard gates and three men crouching behind splintering riot shields as they load another round.
From our rocky crest I have a better view of Shane, who crouches in a fighter’s pose. The men surrounding him stand looser. Shane stops and glances around. Looking for us, I reckon. I’d call out, but for the moment, at least, Margot and I are invisible in the muck and din of battle. He straightens, his mouth moving. From here I can’t tell what he’s saying, who he’s speaking to. The Watchers who have him cornered look around restlessly, scanning the area for us. My stomach balls into a knot of dread as I realize what’s wrong with the scene.
They aren’t punching. They aren’t fighting.
Setup.
“Mar.” I crouch, pulling my sister down on top of the rubble. “Back around this building instead.”
Margot looks up uneasily at the building behind us. It looks for all the world as though it’s about to fall down on top of us, a thousand pounds of death. My sister just blinks at me, nods.
“Careful,” she says.
We pick our way over a dozen chunks of a former wall before we hear a shout. It’s coming from the roof of the four-story building opposite. I look up; a rifle points down at our heads. A man yells for backup. Seconds later, the roof explodes in a shower of sparks and flames and brick. Margot and I duck and sputter, but then I grab her hand, threading her through the chaos as quickly as I can when we’re both blind and deaf from the roar of the explosion.
Think, think, I order my chaotic mind as a Watcher scrambles onto a pile of rocks not twenty feet from us. What would Jared do?
Rip them to shreds, comes the instant answer. And here I’ve no iron claws.
But thinking of him calms me. Jared would tell me to use my brains. He’d tell me to run and hide and be smart, like a mouse.
And mice go to ground in holes.
“Quick, Mar,” I shout. They’re everywhere, the Watchers. And Shane. Shane. My guts twist in fury. The side of the building we’re near has a huge crack down the brickwork, as though it’s been torn.
Ahead of us is an alley that seems relatively quiet and clear, the rubble confined more to the corner that had been ripped apart. I open my mouth to tell Margot we’re nearly there but snap my jaw shut when the shadows ripple. Out step a dozen or so Watchers, all with the messily painted cheeks of the newly initiated.
Margot and I scramble back. Her fingers are soft and wet with sweat. I hear her labored breathing, a match to my own, the hammer of her heart echoing in my chest. The wall…the wall has a six-foot drawing of their sign. Beside it, someone has taken the time to make the letters huge and straight. Evolve or die.
I have time enough to whip my head around when a rough hand grabs me. I bat at it, kicking and screaming. Margot yips. A Watcher’s guttural warning sounds in my ears as she sinks her teeth into the hand snaking over her mouth.
My sister’s fingers are pried from my grip. My hand suddenly free, I have more room to fight. I swing around, catching the terror on Margot’s face as a Watcher pulls her to his chest. And from the corner of my eye I spy Shane, standing behind the ring of Watchers, hands on his hips, something grim and sinister stamped across his features.
The last coherent thought I have is how glad I am that Jared isn’t with us, as surely he’d get himself killed. Then I think of my lonely, naked fingers, so opposite the weight of Margot’s panic as she struggles like a little bird in their grip. All that before something heavy comes down on my head and knocks me into oblivion.
16
My head throbs. I struggle to open my eyes. All I see is red. It takes quite a bit longer than it should to realize why. I’m staring at a stone brick wall covered in the Watchers’ symbol.
My heart gallops as I reach through my senses for Margot. There she is, slumbering inside me. I try to turn my head. My neck is sore. The effort is almost too much. I try to pull my hands up to cradle my aching skull, but they’re stuck. Fastened to something. I’m seated on a chair. Cuffed. My legs have gone numb, and I have the violent urge to pee. A wave of pain swallows me as I try to move. I sweat through it, although, soon enough, I’m retching, and it splits my aching head in two.
Maybe it’s this sound that wakes Margot. She stirs not far from me. I’m comforted by the little burst of breath that always signals to me that she has come awake, the inner spark I feel that accompanies this.
“Mar.” My voice does not sound like my own. Fragile. Lost. I turn my head carefully to the side, one inch, two.
Margot’s hair falls down around her face so I can’t see if she’s been hurt. Streaked white from the explosions, her head bobs up once, twice. She’s a scant three feet away from me. It might as well be a mile. I can’t touch her, can’t reach through our bond to get to her.
“Mar.” I say it quiet-quiet. The way sneaky girls do.
My sister’s head snaps up. She stares, wide-eyed, as though she’s seen straight through to hell.
We don’t speak another word. Margot pulls slightly at her wrists. The heavy ache of iron tugs through me, my arms leaden and tired from the weight of two sets of cuffs. They are cuffs—the kind of iron bands they throw on the worst violators in Dominion.
My sister eyes the sparse room. Her eyebrows flare as she takes in the bright red dripping symbol on the brick wall, set up before us like a static NewsFeed.
My sister turns her head back to me. I read the question in her eyes.
Watchers?
I wince and gasp as I try to move my head around. Margot winces in sympathy, shakes her head slightly. They’ve done something else to her. Maybe drugged her. She looks behind us, then back at me, eyes sharpening.
Door, she mouths.
Trapped on the chair, sweating with pain, I try to unclench my aching jaw and shove my panicked thoughts away. What would Jared do? I think again. He’d tell me to recover, breathe, think. The ball of rage in my belly—not just against the Watchers and their ilk but the beast who gave us up to them—expands. I feel light-headed all over again.
How could Shane have done this to us?
After watching us grow up, shepherding us to and from our events, sheltering us day and night… How long had our father’s man been working for Father Wes? The thought makes me sick to my stomach and I retch again, wishing the poison in my soul was easier to get rid of. For I feel as though, at this
moment, I’ll never be able to wash myself clean of his betrayal.
…
It feels like an eternity before we hear the metallic snick of a lock behind us. The heavy shove of a door. It slams, making us jump, and the lock jigs again. We hear the tread of feet on the gritty stone floor. Those steps materialize before us as a tall, gangly Watcher.
Margot and I regard our captor uneasily. He graces us with a bizarrely tender, utterly insane smile. Thick lines of flesh run down either side of his face like he’s been melting, crisscrossed by the sloppy red circles. His eyes are set far back in his face, framed by heavy eyebrows and a large, crooked nose.
He doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to speak to us, though, so I decide to move the conversation along. But when I open my mouth, I’m surprised at how my words come out, slurred and strange. “What do you want with us?”
The Watcher’s smile deepens, widens, until he looks almost serene. His hand opens at his side, large and callused, his fingers thick as sausages. I’m still watching the hand as it comes up and whips my face, bringing back the darkness like an endless river.
…
Jared’s breath tickles my neck. Don’t you dare give up, Princess. You give up I’ll personally kick your ass. No, worse, I’ll hand you over to Kira and have her kick your ass for real. The threat makes me shiver. I open my eyes a crack and peer at my blond avenging angel. His skin pulls tight, the lines of his flesh drawing down the way it does when he’s ten paces from changing. Do you hear me, Lucy? I will not let you die here. Do not let me down.
I nod weakly. Eyes cold and bright and filled with a thousand emerald suns watch me. He doesn’t touch me. I lean into him. I want so badly to feel his hands. The True Born doesn’t smile exactly, but the corners of his lips curl up. In a blink it seems like some weight has been lifted from him. Good. Good. He presses his lips to the space under my ear. If I could move, I’d squirm as the hairs on my neck stand up. How does he manage to do that when I’m tied to a chair in a Watchers’ dungeon? Lu, he whispers, the words hot on my neck, Lu, Lu, Lu, I love—
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