True Storm

by L. E. Sterling

  I follow his finger. The building is a small tower, with windows up ten floors. The roof would overlook the street nicely, I reckon. The perfect place to keep watch. Jared, of course, has gotten there ahead of me.

  “Time for us to go, kids. Remember.” Jared puts a finger to his lips. “Not a word.”

  The head scratcher loops two fingers together, interlocking them in the middle. “Swear.” It’s the symbol scrawled now on nearly every wall of Dominion. Conjoined circles. Evolve or die.

  Jared starts to climb out of the car, but I grab the back of the front seat, startling the children. “Wait. That thing you just did. What is that?”

  Rupe shrugs. The older goes back to scratching his head. “What thing?”

  “The—the thing. With your hands.”

  “It’s the swear.”

  “What is the swear?”

  The boy scrunches up his nose as though I’ve said something stupid. “Where do you come from, lady?”

  “Please.”

  “It means ‘swear by eternal life’ or something like that.”

  The younger boy pops a finger out of his mouth again. I’m distracted by a gleaming gap in his mouth where he’s lost some teeth, until he says, “You swear on Plague Cure.”

  “What?”

  “Lu, we don’t have time for this.”

  “Oh, right.” The elder boy breaks in. “When the Plague’s broken.” He rolls his eyes. “Like that’s ever going to happen. Anyway, when the Plague’s done, if you’ve broken your swear, you don’t get to live the long life like the rest of the saved.”

  “Who taught you this?”

  “Comes from the preacher men, I reckon.” The boy shoots me another dirty look. “Ain’t you a Laster?”

  “Sure I am,” I say absently.

  But all I can think about is the furious beat of my heart. I get it now. Father Wes and the Watchers had stolen the prophecy from Serena’s mother, then they partnered with the one man in Dominion’s Upper Circle with twin girls. Knowing what was possible, what my father and his Russian backers were planning for us, the preacher men and the Watchers taught the Lasters a sign, a byword about a miraculous cure coming to the worthy. And as it spread from building to building, hand to hand, the sign all but promised that the Lasters would do Father Wes’s bidding…and make billions from their snake oil.

  A knot of nausea grips me as Jared interrupts my train of thought with a furious whisper. “Get your butt down here now, Princess.”

  I shimmy out of the rolled-down window and slip into Jared’s waiting arms. He squeezes me briefly, as though to assure himself that I’m safe, before we melt into the shadows and run for our lives.

  29

  “Gods, I can’t stand it.” Jared’s nose quivers in disgust. We’re still a good five hundred meters from the factory, but even from the shadowy bank of the river where we hide, the air is pungent and thick and cloyingly sweet.

  My stomach rumbles in disagreement. “I’m starving.” There’s a hole in Jared’s shirt just under the collarbone. He worries a finger through the hole as though judging its size. But at least he has the good grace to wear a hangdog expression.

  “I’m sorry, Lu.”

  We’d come across an open grocer, one that even stocked food, but Jared had given most of his cash away to the Laster boys, and I had none. In the end, we’d settled on splitting a roll and a bag of nuts behind the store. It was little enough for one let alone two, but it had cut the sharp pains in my gut. The intense throbbing of my head had also begun to ease off, as had the nausea brought on by the fever.

  “You think it’s safe?”

  “It’s never safe, Lu. Not ever.” He doesn’t mean it as an admonishment. For Jared this is a fact of life, as true as breath or morning or the sharp edge of a sword. I’d be wise to remember how true it is, too, I remind myself.

  This is not the Dominion I grew up in. The city is filled with an alien presence. The sky is dotted with drones. Around every corner, a tank and a line of soldiers in their black riot gear stand in sharp contrast to the bleary white of the sky. And everywhere, everywhere, there is the noise of the hunt. There’s not a single Laster to be seen, save the dying or the dead. And everywhere, there are the haunting pictures resembling the children’s hands. Two conjoined circles.

  Plague Cure. All the Lasters know it.

  Evolve or die.

  Jared pulls a strand of my hair from my mouth, gazing at me with an intensity as sharp as my hunger. His eyes fasten on my mouth. Self-conscious, I run my tongue over my lips. Jared’s hand jumps to mine.

  “Don’t do that.”

  “Why?” I whisper.

  “Because if you do I’m going to kiss you senseless, Lu. I’ll lose my mind and get us killed.”

  “No you won’t.”

  “Oh, I will,” he promises. I stare at his lips and watch his jaw tighten in response. My heart trips again and I take in a sharp, jagged breath.

  “Gods, Lu, please stop. I’m afraid I won’t be able to control myself.”

  And in that moment I realize he’s speaking the truth. No matter what the circumstances, he’s an inch shy of forgetting himself. It thrills me to high heaven. It scares me to my core. But I reckon it’s a quality that calls to something inside me. Because when I’m with him, it feels like I lay myself aside and am reborn as someone else.

  Is this what love is?

  I don’t get to answer this as a sharp, shrill whistle pierces the air. Jared pulls his head up like a rabbit from a hole.

  “They’re here.” He climbs up the small bank and holds out a hand for me. I grab it and end up balancing tight against his body, electric frissons sparking wildly through my veins. “Lu,” he murmurs into my hair as he holds me close. “One day we’re going to finish this conversation.”

  “What conversation?” Instead of answering, Jared silences me with a hot, searing kiss. And then he drags me across an asphalt jungle to the bleak, graffiti-covered doors of the abandoned refinery.

  …

  The air inside the building is a chalky mixture of dust motes and moss, almost as opaque as the skies of Dominion. With its strange half-light, the wide-open floor with its pipes and machines makes me shiver. Mohawk leans over Doc Raines’s shoulder with a flashlight as she tinkers on a flat black box. “There.” She smiles in satisfaction and flicks a switch. Lights go on in a row all down the floor.

  “Turn them off, Doc.” Jared stares daggers.

  “Jared, I need them to—”

  “Turn them off. The army is searching every corner of the city. You don’t think they’re going to want to check out the building that’s been abandoned for the past twenty years but that just happens to flare to life tonight?”

  Doc Raines drops her shoulders in defeat. “I should have considered that.” With a flip of the switch, the refinery floor dims again. Mohawk sneezes, leading the light from her flash to bounce chaotically across the floor and the pipes that line the wall like thick ribbons. Jared paces until finally Torch returns from his upstairs sweep.

  “Nothing but some rats,” he reports. “Though a ton of ’em.”

  Mohawk shows off her pointy teeth. “Good. I may get hungry later.”

  “Well, we’ll still need a bit of juice and light running into the generators.” Doc Raines shakes her bag at the True Borns.

  Jared nods at the young man. “Torch, find some juice for the doc. Then stand watch on the upper deck. I want plenty of warning if we’re going to have guests.”

  “Why does he get all the fun?” Mohawk crosses her legs. The muscles in her powerful thighs ripple, making it appear as though the strange patterns on her skin are moving.

  Jared crosses his arms and glares. “You need to keep helping Doc Raines.”

  “Isn’t ‘the boy’ supposed to be the one good at tinkering with machines?”

  “Penny.” Jared slashes in annoyance at a golden lock that has fallen into his eye. “I need you here on the floor in case we’re
surprised or overpowered. You need to get Lucy and the doc out of here. Or die trying,” he adds grimly.

  Mohawk preens, running a hand over the black crest of her hair. “In that case,” she purrs, “I’d be happy to.”

  “What of Storm and the others?” I tug at Jared’s sleeve.

  Jared’s jaw clenches. “We’re not to get in touch for a while.”

  “Why?”

  But I know why. Even before Jared lowers his eyes to mine and says, in a quiet-quiet voice, “So we’re not traced back.”

  I translate mentally. Jared must think Storm is still in custody.

  “Are you worried?”

  “No,” Jared tells me quickly enough, though a shadow falls across his eyes as he does.

  Something buzzes and pops. A machine blinks on in Doc Raines’s hands. “Good. We’re in business,” she says.

  …

  They pump me and prime me and put me through something like Splicer Protocols. Fourteen hours. Just fourteen hours is all it takes to pull from my skin and blood and bone the strange mixture of Margot and me.

  As I lie on the floor, my head cradled in Jared’s lap, I idly wonder about the Laster men who’d sat for Storm’s council. I imagine Theodore Nash’s smug, smiling face, crumbling to dust. I try not to think about Margot, or Ali, or the bloody head of Father Wes. And when the fever takes me, it’s as though I’m flying, my body so light and unchained I wonder if I still have skin.

  I really am dying, my feverish brain supplies. If I die, Jared will be free. But Jared keeps me tethered to my body. He wipes the sweat from my forehead as Doc Raines used her laparoscopic pic needles to pull the special True Born Talismans from my body. Twinned strands, one for each of the girls, wound so tightly together they become something else.

  I doze. I wake. Sometimes I do both at once, unable to separate wakefulness from the weight of dreams.

  And in my more lucid moments, I speak to Jared about the biggest danger we face.

  “He owns the Watchers and the army. Don’t you see?”

  The single greatest threat to anyone, to everyone, is my ruthless father. Lukas Fox.

  “Yes.” Jared simply agrees, gazing down at me with an unfathomable expression.

  “What can we do?” I whisper. A tear escapes to leak down my face. Jared soothes it away with the gentlest of motions. “No one can win against him.”

  The True Born flips out his cockiest smile. “Don’t be so sure.”

  I snort. But Jared shakes his head. “Look, your dad is undoubtedly a master tactician.” I marvel at the word “dad” used to speak of such a man. He’s no one’s dad. At this point I have trouble thinking of him as anyone’s father.

  “Yes,” I mimic.

  “We’re ahead of him on this one, Lu.” I know Jared means what he says. I know we think that. But is it true?

  “Five minutes.” Doc Raines’s voice floats over from somewhere nearby.

  “Good.” I sigh with relief. “I can hardly wait to get up and walk around awhile.”

  “You’ll need to take it easy.” Doc Raines shakes her head in warning. “It’s been a long stretch since your last break. You’ll likely experience dizziness, nausea, fatigue. And then there’s the fact that I have no idea what will happen to you now that we’ve extracted so much. I can’t guarantee you’ll be stable.”

  “Gee, Doc, don’t sugarcoat it or anything,” Jared mocks.

  And then time stops again. I hover in a space between the minutes, where there is only rain. Crimson rain mixing with ashes and tears, falling on the land and turning the parched world new again.

  Margot, I was wrong, I muse out loud. Death is not a glimmering blue at all.

  And when I return to the world, nimble fingers pull wires and tubes from my skin, leaving behind tiny pricks of displeasure. I’m so distracted it takes me a moment to register the chalky white face and drawn expression that mars Jared’s handsome features. I raise my hand to touch his cheek but find I can’t control it well enough to make contact.

  “What’s wrong?” I’m weak as a kitten.

  “We’ve got company, Princess. You well enough to stand?”

  “Why? Can’t we stay here a while longer?”

  It’s hard for me to read Jared’s face in the dim light. At some point it must have fallen dusk again, because now only a garish white light scours the side of his face.

  Something is terribly wrong.

  I struggle to sit up. “Smell that?” Jared tips his chin to the doors by the far entrance. The one we’ve locked and double locked and then barricaded for good measure.

  A deep, powerful voice trembles the air as the creep of smoke and ash and the horrible, clawing scent of paint and burning wood fills the air.

  “Jared, it’s now or never.” As Nolan Storm swarms into view, Jared nods.

  “You’ve been out for quite a while now, Lucy. How are you feeling?”

  My eyes bounce and glide off the powerful leader of the True Borns, a trick I’ve almost become accustomed to. He’s still in his dress shirt from the funeral, though it’s become dirty, torn and frayed at one cuff. A pale splatter of red mars one side of his chest. Something like a slight yellow bruise kisses the skin beneath a red welt on his left cheek. They’ve beaten Nolan Storm. Beaten him.

  “They hurt you,” I say, as if that will somehow make it less true.

  “No, Lucy.” Storm takes my hands. Between him and Jared, I’m turned upright and set on my jelly-filled legs. I’m struck by a feeling of lightning, the strange unearthliness of the man before me, whose eyes sing of death. He gives me a hint of a smile now, the jagged, tough planes of his face revealing nothing. “They can’t hurt me.”

  “Did you see my father?”

  Storm sighs. “Yes.”

  Jared hooks one arm around my waist and drapes half of me over his shoulder. Storm holds my other arm, and between the two of them I’m carried over to the stairs leading to the second floor.

  “I don’t think I want to go up there.” I give my escorts a baleful look. “I hear there are rats.”

  “Don’t worry,” Jared answers breezily. “I think Penny ate most of ’em.”

  I shiver. Storm lifts my arm, and before I can blink, I’m on the first stair. I glance back at him.

  “Did they tell you?”

  Storm nods. “Yes.” And my foggy brain wonders if he knew before or whether he suspected that Margot and I were of Cernunnos’s line, just like him. Was that the reason he’s protected us all this time? Is that why he asked for my hand?

  I become aware that I’ve been staring as Jared hoists me higher on his shoulder and squeezes my hand.

  “I reckon we’re kin, then.” I toss the word out bravely, as though this is an everyday announcement. But my legs are tired and weak. My throat is on fire. And I feel as though I’ve been burning in the everlasting fires of hell forever.

  “Something like that.” His tone is reassuring, light, but then he smiles at me in a way that tells me his courtliness is a sham. “Not quite kissing cousins, if that’s what you’re worried about.” Beside me, Jared grows stiff as a board.

  “What happens next?”

  “Oh, you and Jared are going to take a little trip.”

  My mind slips, becomes unpinned from my body. I feel as though I’m floating. “Is this a dream?” I ask.

  “No.” Storm’s voice is gentle, but it shakes with power. “No, not a dream. I am going to take the city now, Lucy, so I need you to go with Jared and be safe. Once I’m finished, we’ll get back to discussing our future and the future of Dominion. All right by you?”

  I don’t know whether I nod or not. Storm’s arching crown twists and turns, spidery thick snakes of power rising, and I become lost in their splendor. But I do feel Jared’s hand at my back, burning hot against my chilled bones.

  My throat is parched. My words rasp from a painfully dry throat. “Are you going to kill him, Storm?”

  Storm stares down at me with relentless liquid
eyes. “Yes, Lucy. I’m going to kill your father.”

  And then somehow, though I’m swamped with disgust and a strange, elated thrill I can’t bear to think about, we’re suddenly pushed through a small door to find ourselves outside, staring into the mouth of hell.

  The sky on all sides of the slightly pitched and warped roof of the refinery is a gaping, open wound. The typically gauzy sky bleeds red and orange. Everything is obscured by thick, acrid smoke heavy with the unmistakable scent of burned sugar.

  “What’s happening?” I ask, but there’s no need. I reckon I know. Lukas Fox is happening.

  My father has set us on fire.

  …

  The wind whips my hair all around my face, but through strands that I bat at with weak fingers, I can make out the heavy pipes of tank guns pointed at the refinery. All around the building are soldiers in SWAT gear. Quickly I pivot my gaze, looking for the sniper who will snuff us out. But a quick glance around proves there are no buildings nearby. Storm chooses his castles well.

  Storm gazes dispassionately at the scene below and plucks my thoughts from my mind. “We chose this location for its strategic value. They’ll have trouble burning us out, I think. Time enough to do what we must.”

  My puzzlement over this is broken by the sound of a phone. Storm pulls out the slim device and stares at its screen. We both know who’s calling.

  A metallic-coated voice rises up from the base of the building. “It’s no use, Storm. Send me down my daughter or you’ll all die like the little rats you are.” Storm doesn’t react, except to smile. It’s one of the scariest things I’ve ever seen. Then, a moment later, “Lucinda, listen carefully. All your little True Born friends are going to die. Their blood will be on your hands unless you do exactly as I say.”

  Prickles of hot shame pop out on my skin. A sudden bout of nausea grips me. I lean over and heave, but there is nothing inside me. Nothing left. Jared holds me with one arm, his hand soothing my back while the other flips my hair away from my face. “Don’t worry, Lu.” He holds my head as I heave again. “Doc Raines said you’d likely be ill after all that you just went through.”

  But I know it’s more than that. It’s the burden of knowing my friends are at risk because of me. Because I exist. Still, even had I wanted to listen to Lukas, to give in and give myself up, I reckon I know better.