“That's a first,” Rune said appreciatively.
Air hissed from a tall, narrow panel of the Fish's hull. Popping open, it swung forward and touched the ground, forming a ramp, and revealing a small door. Sterling stepped out from the open hatch. “Need a lift?” he shouted at us over the remaining knives of wind that shot out from below the ship. I could see the grin on his face, even from this distance. Testing the sturdiness of the built-in ramp, Sterling hurried down to the street.
“Come on, move!” he said when he reached us. “Kyle says this kind of landing is bad for the engines. She can't sit like this for long.”
“I might need some help getting up there,” I said miserably, struggling to amble with Rune's support.
“Gravity is it good to see you, Kat,” Sterling said over the wind. He looked like he'd been really worried about me. “What happened?”
“Rune tried to cut her leg off, just like a good puppet,” Dylan said with a malicious smirk.
“And you shot me in the back like any true coward would,” Rune growled.
“Don't be so judgmental. Little Kat here shot me while I was in a cage.”
“I warned you first,” I said with a savage smile. Couldn't I just kill him now? But as much as he enraged me and insulted me, I was too happy about our rescue to have it spoiled.
“Can I have a turn next?” Sterling asked lightly.
“No!” Dylan snapped.
We clustered around the narrow ramp, and Dylan stepped up first, taking care of himself before the rest of us. I could have held a hand out, shocked him, and gotten even for his cruelty, but I didn't.
Sterling grunted, behind me. I couldn't blame him. He probably didn't like Dylan's attitude any more than I did.
Rune was standing perfectly still at my side. In fact, Dylan hadn't moved either. Why were they doing that? Why were they holding so still? Clinging to Rune's arm for stability, I turned around.
Margrave Hest, tall as she was, held Sterling by the throat with a single hand. Her other arm was broken, dangling from the socket, but even as she stood there, she rotated her shoulder and it drew up, popping it back into place.
Sterling's feet brushed the ground and he gripped her clawed arm, hands turning white with the pressure. His face was going red. He was gasping, choking.
Something was embedded in the center of his chest. It was square, with a thick tube running through it and into a needle in Hest's arm.
A million volts of electricity may as well have coursed through me for the shock I that assailed me.
She was going to drain him!
“No, Hest! Stop!” I screamed.
A grand roar of thunder drowned out my voice and a bolt of wild lightning struck the ground thirty feet away. It touched down for a split second and, attracted by my energy, it flicked to me. I'd been struck again, and everything turned white. The power flowed into me, the way it had on the ship, the mass of a waterfall pouring into a cup that would not overflow. The energy built up in my body, barely contained by my flesh.
I wasn't in pain anymore. I almost felt weightless, lifted by the raw power of static electricity. The current tumbled within me, a celebration of force, demanding release.
I opened my lids, forcing the electric film that covered me to part in the shape of my eyes. I focused on Hest, and channeled the current at her. The bolt exploded from me, branching out with arms that stabbed her so hard, she was carried clean off her feet. The Margrave's body flung away and skidded to the ground.
The device had ripped from Sterling's chest, and he lay in a pile on the ground.
My voice came out thick. “No, no, no...”
Sterling had gone grey.
I tumbled down beside him, not caring about the lancing pain that shot up my leg into my back. “No, Sterling! Stay here, stay here.” I fumbled, pressing against the circle of deep cuts in his chest.
There was still a little color in his face, wasn't there?
Wasn't there?
“You're strong. Stay with us,” I sobbed, my tears falling from my eyes heavier than the rain that washed over the cape.
Sterling's head tilted to face me, his mouth was open and his throat worked, like he was trying to speak. His eyes filled with water. He was looking at me.
I grinned, and sniffled, desperately holding his chest and pulling at his shoulder. “See! You're going to be okay.”
Sterling reached a hand up. It brushed my arm, lacking the strength to close around my wrist, but he tried. He was so weak. It wasn't like him. Not at all.
When he had made as much contact as he could manage, he closed his eyes with effort.
I inhaled.
He was taking me back through my memories again. This time, instead of glancing over my buried memories of my mother, he was showing me a sweet girl with almond eyes, glasses, and brightly dyed red hair.
The first thing I saw was Ruby and I arguing in the park. I'd told her that Sterling was using her to find out more about me so that he could sell me out to his father. I saw it all over again, but we didn't stay, like a stone skipping over water, we moved back farther still. I was at school. It was sunny, as always, with bright fluffy clouds dropping round shadows over the green lawn. The Wendy River was glistening in the sunlight. I was sitting on the bank alone, watching Ruby and Sterling. They were on the opposite side, sitting under the shade of a leafy green tree. Sterling had his guitar, and he was playing for her. She leaned on his shoulder giggling, her apple-red hair spilling over her face. The memory skipped back again, and I saw us in the basket of the Clockwork Ferris Wheel. We jumped into the water in the night.
The memories faded from focus, and brought me back to reality. He was trying to talk to me, using my memories. He wanted me to take care of Ruby, to free her and watch out for her.
I looked down at him and sobbed. “No, no, no, wait.”
Sterling's lip quirked up in the closest thing to a smile he could manage. The last blush of color fled his face, relenting to the grey. His eyes glazed over, staring, but not seeing. His chest moved, breathing, but not living. He was gone.
Sterling was gone.
C hapter 48: No Sister of Mine
Margrave Hest was writhing in the middle of the street that led to Cape Hill's palaces. Just beyond her lay all the Dragoons, grievously injured or killed by Dylan's attack of the Lift. Rune and his allies barricaded the installment, temporarily trapping reinforcements within. The entire city might as well have been abandoned for how empty of people it was. Wind blasted from beneath the copper mass of the Flying Fish. Her sails furled back into the mast tubing.
The morning was a rivalry between storm and sun, and the chill in the air was biting. White sea birds with long tails flocked toward the ocean. Somewhere in the distance, a bell began to chime. It would have been a beautiful day if Hest hadn't just killed one of my friends.
My nails cut into my palms with the force of my constricted fists. Slowly rising to stand over Sterling's empty grey body, I stared at my enemy with the kind of gaze that directed a force of hatred strong enough to implode the sun. The tendons in my left leg had been severed and sealed. I could barely walk. That didn't stop me. I shambled toward her, knowing that I was in pain, and letting it feed my rage.
Something was wrong with her. She was shaking as though having a seizure. Seeing my approach, she flipped onto her belly and looked at me. The long twisted growth that pointed off her face looked less like a beak and more like a snout now. Half of her lips were gone, growing into the mutation. I knew what was happening to her. She was digesting Sterling's power and it was changing her.
She began to laugh and wail from the agony of it.
“You would pursue me now? You would not flee?” She snaked along the ground toward me, sounding thrilled. “We truly are alike, you and I. Sisters in spirit. We were different than the rest. No one ever- ugn... understood us. We never belonged. It is our right to carve ourselves a place in history, carve it of flesh and blood and power.�
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Her leg snapped, growing wider, longer. Metal tendrils erupted from her body, piling over the others. One of her clawed hands doubled in size, and ridges rose from her forearms. She quaked and seethed from the pain, but the remaining half of her lip smiled. “He was a Lodestone too, your friend. Simply incredible. I was once the impoverished daughter of a farmer, graced with the Ability to grow, mend, and break bones. I would have been nothing if not for the Ivory. Look at me now, the first person in more than six hundred years to drain a human Lodestone.”
Long talons burst from her back, reaching out like spider legs.
Her voice was warped and sounded like the crumpling of aluminum. “Won't you say anything to me, little sister?” she crooned. “No? Nothing? How about for the sake of your other friends here.”
Rune and Dylan appeared beside me, standing straight and still. They blinked and breathed, but she had stopped them from being able to speak or move.
Hest produced a tall scepter of curving white bone in her hand as similar horns grew from her twisting, beastly head. The last of her lips was gone. I could see no more skin on her. She had lost the last shred of her humanity.
Her eyes turned liquid silver.
A siren began to wail.
The change was not complete. A ridge crested her back, forcing her to slump over until she stretched and straightened it. Jagged metal bones wrapped over one another. At her full height, she was ten feet tall. The claws of her feet dug into the brick street, cracking the blocks and mortar. She coughed in a horrid, grating sound, and then began to laugh again. “Wouldn't... wouldn't they look much better with a few improvements?”
“Stop!” I shouted at her. “Leave them alone.”
Her eyes shone from beneath the tangle of her brow. Her head looked like the combination of bird, goat, and auto wreckage. Her stretched body was elongated and insect-like. “I'm afraid not, dear, you've already hurt my feelings. Now let me show you what I was imagining.”
I took a step forward, but she stopped me with the Command. My arms snapped behind my back, and with a touch of the scepter, the bones in my wrists spiked out and fused together. I cried out and growled at her, breathing raggedly. Lightning bloomed around my arms, but they were bound and I couldn't direct the energy well enough to reach her.
“How about this?” Hest raised her scepter, but it began to shake, and it nearly slipped out of her hand. “Why young Lord Axton. Are you fighting back? We both know you're spent from your little show earlier. I'd even call you helpless.”
She prodded his chest with the end of her scepter. “What's this? You're a Commander! I can feel the attachment to your bones. But how? Ah... Stakes, that psychopath. Now this is interesting. A bastard Commander! How ever did you escape? You know we would have killed you. It must pay to have a royal brother in power.”
She was toying with him. Baiting me. “Stop!”
“Or what?” she snapped. The staff connected with Dylan's chest and white horns burst from his head, spiraling down to his shoulders. Dylan screamed through his teeth and fainted, hitting the ground hard.
The monster that was Hest made a sound of disappointment. “I can't Command you if you're unconscious. Where's the entertainment in that? You then, my freedom fighter. We have unfinished business anyway, don't we?”
A horn wailed from the Flying Fish. The turbines on its belly were beginning to spew hot air. The ship was overheating.
I ground my teeth together in frustration.
Hest came closer to Rune, lowering herself down to our level. She hissed, quaking, as a pair of tails tore from her body and thrashed madly behind her. She was trembling more and more. Sterling's energy was changing her too quickly. She was unstable.
“You would look fine, decorated in bone, Dragoon, but I think I'd rather show you what it would have been like. Just a taste of the power you would have had, if you'd drained that simpering sister of yours. You could have been a Commander! Let that one regret be your final thought before I take it all back.”
I struggled, but her hold on me was firm. My whole body lit with lightning. She hovered over Rune, pulling the syringe end of the draining device from her chest. If Rune were injected with Sterling's power, he would be destroyed, the same way Hest was being destroyed. I couldn't let it happen. Somehow, I couldn't.
“Don't! Not him!” I screamed at her. “I'll kill you if you hurt him!”
“You would harm your own sister?”
“You are not my sister!”
“Yes,” she roared at me. “I am! We are the same! You know we are. We always have been! No one else understands you the way I do! We were nothing, and we had to fight to make ourselves something. Life changed us, isolated us. People feared us, even the people we loved. We didn’t deserve that. But we are strong! We adapted. We survived. Don’t you see? We have each other now.” She sounded desperate. There it was. Even the hard, disciplined Margrave harbored a deep scarring sorrow. That's why she'd been so quick to trust me, so keen to help me as I pretended to be a Historian. It was her own excuse to confide in someone, to not be alone.
“I'll show you, sister, he'll understand, you all will,” she said, and stabbed Rune in the shoulder with the needle of the draining device.
Thunder sang out, rattling the world around us. Dizzy with adrenalin, I barely understood what I was doing. I needed to pull the needle out of Rune's body. I needed to stab her with it. So I did.
Electricity so dense that it was nearly solid poured from my shoulders and formed a new pair of arms and hands, the exact same length and size as my real ones. Lightning burst from my feet, lifting me so that I was easily taller than the Margrave. I tore the needle from Rune's arm with an electric hand and stabbed it right into Hest's neck.
Unable to contain my fury, rogue branches of lightning burst in rays from my back. One of them curved around and shocked her with such force it threw us apart.
Rune screamed, breaking free from her hold, and fell to one knee. He clutched his arm. I wanted to go to him, but I wouldn't make the same mistake with Hest twice. I'd stop her for good if it meant splitting the sky open to do it.
Black hair flying wildly around me in the hot cold wind, I walked to where Hest had fallen. The lightning under my feet made the ground feel springy, and supported my injured leg well enough for me to move. It was as though I were gliding. The lightning that flashed around me sounded like the shattering glass dome of the installment, ever creaking and crackling.
Hest was buckling over. She kept changing. Limbs would burst out from her body, spines, and tails and wings, and then they would break down and warp into something else. She was fifteen feet long now, and still the mutations didn't cease.
“Why won't it stop?” she howled. Her voice was getting lower, more broken. “Don't be afraid. It's me, Lauren Hest, your sister. Don't leave me, please. I'm the finest soldier to ever serve Prince Raserion. I am powerful now, look at me. Please don't leave, I'm you're sister. What's happening to me? This is wrong! There's a drumming in my head! A drumming! What has happened?”
It was pitiful, disgusting, and exactly what she deserved. I let the lightning lower me to the ground, the power dissipated, and exhaustion claimed me. Even my lightning arms faded away. Giving her one last look I said, “Sterling has killed you.”
I turned my back on her and limped toward the Fish, half dragging my left leg.
There was a sickening crack, and the noises behind me stopped. My wrists, pinned together behind my back, separated. Shards of bone dusted my hands and wrists. I could barely move my fingers, but everything looked normal. The extra bone that fused my hands together was Hest’s own making, and dissolved with her demise.
Fatigue from expending so much power so quickly, fogged my head and blotted my vision. It felt a little bit like not eating for two days, laying down, and getting up too quickly. The agony that pulsed up my leg made the rest of me feel exquisite in comparison.
Hot air gusted over me as I limped back to
Rune. He was standing now, cradling his right arm and squeezing his jaw against the pain.
“We have to go, now,” he said over the siren.
Dylan groped the ground, crawling over the crumbled bones that had broken free from his head. He scrambled to his feet, nearly falling. “I-s, is she dead?”
“Are you alright?” I asked them both.
Rune nodded with a stony expression. His icy blue eyes settled on Sterling's body.
“Of course I'm not alright,” Dylan said, running a shaking hand through his long hair. He looked as though he was seconds from panicking. “Let's get out of here.” He moved to flee up the ramp.
My hand shot out and sent a mild static shock into his back. I may have been tired, but I wasn’t down and out just yet.
“Augh! What the hell was that for?”
“We are not leaving him.”
Together, the three of us, mangled as we were, carried Sterling aboard the ship. The last one inside, I practically fell through the door. Rune cranked the rotating lever that worked the ramp hatch. It slammed up behind us, hissing as the airtight mechanisms locked into place.
We were in the corridor outside the engine room. It was hot, blistering hot, and humid, like a pot of boiling soup. Kyle flew out of the engine room with a crooked grin large enough to climb up the side of his face. He reached up to a line that ran above us and pulled on it hard. A sharp horn blasted, and within seconds, I could feel Carmine revving the engines, and pulling us into the air.
Kyle's curly brown hair was soaked and hung in ropy strands. His clothes were completely drenched with grease, oil and sweat. He looked exhausted, stressed and relieved... until he saw Sterling.
C hapter 49: Silver and Green
“Can you do anything to help him?” I was at Sterling's bedside, watching his chest rise and fall. His eyes were open, vacant, unblinking. Everything about him had gone ashen, monochrome.
Kyle stood at the end of the bed with his hands in his pockets. He shook his head.
Dragoon (War of the Princes Book 2) Page 27