The Kat Dubois Chronicles: The Complete Series (Echo World Book 2)

by Lindsey Fairleigh

  Dorman turned his head enough that he could just see me out of the corner of his eye. Garth, on the other hand, spun around, hands extended, and stared at me for a few seconds. His eyes were rounded, his lips parted. As soon as the momentary shock wore off, he rushed me. He wrapped his arms around me and lifted me off the ground, burying his face in my hair, his nose firmly lodged in the crook of my neck. I could feel his breaths, quick and hot against my shoulder.

  His reaction took me by surprise, and for a moment, I was a stunned rag doll, arms and legs dangling. I knew he cared, but this was some serious giving-a-shit. Way more than I’d been prepared for. It only took a moment for my heart to warm, the sheer, overwhelming mass of his concern for me thawing my stupor and seeping into my soul. I wrapped my arms around his broad torso and squeezed my eyes shut, fighting the sudden sting of welling tears caused by the avalanche of emotions.

  Garth was gripping my jacket so hard that his knuckles were digging into my back. It was far from comfortable, but I hardly minded. “Don’t ever do that to me again,” he said, his gravelly voice hoarse. After several more heartbeats, he set my feet back on the floor.

  I glanced up at him, meeting his rich brown eyes for only a moment. His skin was red and irritated from the tear gas, worse than it had been before, and the whites of his eyes were bloodshot. I wouldn’t apologize for shoving him through the gateway to safety and leaving myself at risk. It had been my choice, and I would make the same one again, a million times over.

  As I stared at the scuffed floor, I felt the corner of my mouth lift. I finally understood my mom’s decision all those years ago. For the first time ever, I could relate to her sacrifice. Garth’s life mattered to me, just as much as my own. Maybe more.

  The realization was shocking, and I raised my eyes to meet his once more. What was happening to me? What were these thoughts I was having? These things I was feeling? I searched his eyes, looking for some explanation. All I found was a troubling sense of contentment, of hope and joy and peace. And it gave rise to a fear that threatened to consume me completely.

  I couldn’t fall in love with a human. It was the ultimate form of self-destruction for a Nejeret. It was setting myself up for guaranteed, unavoidable failure. For heartbreak. For soul-destroying devastation.

  And yet there didn’t seem to be any way to stop it. I was a train, hurtling toward a half-completed trellis, and I had no brakes.

  Garth licked his lips. “Kat, I—”

  It’s just the adrenaline from the fight, I told myself. Stressful situations cause heightened emotions. That’s all. I lowered my gaze and cleared my throat. “I borrowed your car,” I said, interrupting him and redirecting us away from any impromptu declarations. Not ready, not now . . . not ever. “And your cat’s in there,” I added. The corner of my mouth lifted once more, and I glanced up at him through my lashes. “Gotta say, sweet ride, copper.”

  Garth’s eyes widened, whatever he’d been about to say catching in his throat, and the faintest smile touched his lips. “Dorman told me you took Eva with you. Thank you, Kat, really.” He shook his head ever so slowly. “So what do you think of Lola?”

  My eyebrows rose. “Lola? You named your car Lola?”

  He shrugged.

  I met his shrug with a single raised shoulder. “She’s alright,” I said, mock nonchalance thick in my voice.

  Dorman coughed purposefully and took a step toward us. “So . . .” He gestured to the one-way gateway. “This is a clusterfuck.”

  I glanced at him, then shifted my focus beyond him to the gateway and the scene taking place in Garth’s condo. Cops and paramedics swarmed the place, wheeling a couple of the injured mercenaries out on stretchers and escorting a few more out in cuffs. A few more would follow in body bags, once the scene was processed. The scene that was Garth’s condo. His home.

  “I’m so sorry,” I told Garth, watching him out of the corner of my eye.

  He turned his attention from me to the gateway, blowing out a breath. “I knew there’d be risks when I offered to help you.” His words were exactly the right thing to settle my guilt and doubt, but his tone was tight, and his expression was weary. I didn’t think he’d fully processed the implications of all that had happened.

  “You can’t go back there, Garth,” I said, needing him to grasp the severity of the situation. Of his situation, courtesy of me and my drama. “You can’t go home, and you can’t go to the station.” I turned to face him, reaching for his hand. His darker skin was raw and red, where the pale skin on the back of my hand was already mostly healed. His fate was now tied to mine, and his life was so much more fragile. “You have to disappear until I get this all sorted out.”

  His thick fingers slipped between mine. “I can help you.” His offer was sweet, but there was a wild look in his eyes. It was starting to sink in, and he was grasping for something to hold onto while the rest of his world fell apart.

  I flashed him a weak smile and shook my head. He’d taken an oath the day he earned his badge—serve and protect. Helping me from this point on would mean breaking that oath in every way possible. “You should go to Bainbridge. You’ll be safe with Heru and Lex.”

  Garth stepped in front of me, blocking my view of the gateway. “I want to help you.”

  I looked past him, meeting Dorman’s curious stare. For some reason, what happened between Garth and me next mattered to him. My choice mattered to him. Would I use Garth, or would I protect him? Maybe it would show Dorman what kind of a person I really was. Maybe it would be the thing that determined where his allegiance truly lay, regardless of what happened with the cure.

  I held Dorman’s stare for a moment longer, decision made. I wouldn’t use Garth; I would keep him safe. Always. Even if it meant hurting him another way.

  I looked at Garth, my stare unflinching. “You can’t help me. You’ll only get in my way.”

  His expression hardened, and he pressed his full lips together.

  “I’ll draw a gateway to Bainbridge,” I said, voice flat.

  Garth shook his head. “I’ll drive. There’s something I have to do along the way, anyway.”

  “But you will go there, right?”

  He nodded once.

  I clenched my jaw. “Fine.”

  “Fine,” he said.

  “Alright, so . . .” Dorman forced out a rough, nervous laugh. “Now that that’s decided . . .”

  Chapter Seventeen

  I walked Garth the quarter mile to his car, as much to make sure he got there safely as to show him where I’d parked it. It was half past eight, and the street running alongside I-5 was quiet. And Garth was quiet. And I was quiet. We were just a couple bundles of quiet, the two of us, surrounded by more, tense quiet.

  “Listen, Garth,” I started as we jaywalked across the empty street. “I know you’re capable of—”

  “I get it, Kat.” Garth looked up the street, away from me, then glanced my way. “I mean, look at you—you were covered in burns from the gas, head to toe, and now you’re good as new, while I . . .” He trailed off, clearing his throat with a cough. Tear gas is a real bitch on the ol’ esophagus and lungs. “I can’t even begin to understand what it must be like to be one of you . . . to heal the way you do . . . to know you’ll live for centuries while the rest of the world, well . . .” He laughed bitterly, gravel on concrete. “I’m like glass compared to your steel. You’re worried about me. I’m flattered, actually.”

  I eyed him as we walked and he talked, hands in my pockets, tongue tangled in knots.

  He didn’t say anything those final few steps to the car, but when we reached it, he took hold of my upper arms and backed me against the driver’s side. “I might be fragile compared to you, and I might come with a definite expiration date,” he said, leaning into me, our bodies touching from knees to chest. “But I’m not weak, Kat, and I’m not backing down from whatever this is that’s developing between us.”

  I raised my chin, my eyes locked with his. “Whi
ch would be what, exactly?”

  His dimples appeared as he smiled, just a little. “I don’t know yet, but I sure as hell plan to find out.” He angled his head downward and leaned in, claiming my lips for a few blissful seconds.

  I probably shouldn’t have let him kiss me, considering that, unlike Garth, I had no intention of indulging in our reckless relationship any further. I could already feel my heart hardening, closing him out. Which is maybe why I savored that last kiss so much.

  Palm to his sternum, I pushed him back a few inches and slipped out from between him and his car. I dug his phone out of my coat pocket and handed it to him. “Use the West Seattle Ferry Terminal,” I said, licking my lips. I could still taste him there, vanilla and coffee. I started across the street. “My people will be expecting you, so if you don’t show up at their gates on Bainbridge in a couple hours, I’ll come after you myself.”

  “Promises, promises . . .”

  I glanced at him over my shoulder. Didn’t say anything. Just looked at him.

  Garth nodded, and a second later, he opened the car door and slid into the driver’s seat. The engine rumbled to life before I’d reached the sidewalk, and I felt a little of the tension tightening my shoulders ease as he roared away. He was out of this, for now.

  I rubbed my hands together and broke into a jog. It was time for the real work to begin.

  “Do you have a plan yet?” Dom asked me as I neared the eastern gate.

  “Parts of one,” I told him, slowing to a walk. “And yes, it still involves Nik.”

  I passed through the gate, the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end. Planting my hands on my hips, I stopped and looked around. The first hundred feet or so within the eastern gate was a smaller version of the northern gate’s bazaar, only focused solely on ready-to-eat food. It had been bustling with people when Garth and I were on our way out, barely ten minutes ago. Now it was all but abandoned. “Where is everyone?”

  “Was Dorman planning any kind of an assembly or a gathering?”

  I shook my head. “Don’t know,” I said as I targeted the nearest person, an elderly Chinese guy manning a fried noodle bar. He was one of the few people still hanging around. “Hey,” I said to him as I approached. “Where’d everyone go?” I pointed to the rest of the thoroughfare with my chin.

  The man squinted, deepening the creases fanning out in the skin around his eyes. “There was shouting in the square,” he said, and I assumed he was referring to the central portion of the Tent District, where Dorman’s office and the hospital were. “Very loud shouting and other sounds, and everyone ran to it.” Noodle Guy was quiet for a moment, then nodded to himself. “But they will come back. Everyone has to eat.”

  I was already running toward the square by the time he finished talking. The crowd was on its way back, hushed murmurs exchanged between people clinging together at the elbows or comforting each other with arms around shoulders and waists. Red-rimmed eyes and the pale skin of shock marked most of them.

  “I have a very bad feeling about this,” Dom said.

  “Gee,” I muttered, “you think?” The closer I drew to the square, the thicker the milling and meandering crowd became, and with me moving against the tide, I had to do my fair share of shoving and offer up a string of excuse-mes and move-its just to make headway.

  There were too many people to see what was going on in the square, and I wasn’t tall enough to see over them, so I did what any logical person would do—I climbed one of the old, rusted shipping containers someone was using as a house. They stacked them up here in threes and fours and fives, the Tent District’s version of apartments. Once I could see over the crowd, it was easy enough to find the eye of the storm.

  Maybe forty feet from the entrance to the hospital-hangar, Dorman knelt on the ground, a small, frail body cradled on his lap and a solid ten feet between him and the crowd encircling him. His head was bowed over the child, his ever-present baseball cap removed. Even from so far away, I could see the blood spattering his clothing and tell that his shoulders were shaking.

  There were other people on the ground near him, some moving, some not. There was so much blood sprayed around on the people and asphalt within that open space that it looked like someone had poured out buckets full of dark red paint.

  “What the hell happened?” I said, more talking to myself than to Dom.

  He answered anyway. “It must’ve been one of the kids. If another child entered the final phase of the disease and turned rabid unexpectedly . . .”

  Slowly, I shook my head. “But they’re sedated. How could any of their bodies override the drugs?”

  “I shall confer with Neffe. I’ll return shortly.”

  I nodded and jumped down from the side of the shipping container. My hands smelled like rust and iron and paint, and I wrinkled my nose even as I returned to shoving my way through the crowd. I needed to get to Dorman to find out exactly what happened. If the sedative wasn’t enough, we’d have to come up with another plan. There were dozens of kids on the verge of entering the final phase, even more adults not long after that. If just one small child could do this much damage—infect who knew how many more people—what would happen if two went wild simultaneously? Or more?

  It took me maybe five minutes to fight my way through the crowd, and I stepped on more than a few toes in the process. The Nejerets at least knew to get out of my way, and the humans proved themselves quick learners. By the time I reached the clearing, Dorman was on his feet, the child limp on the ground at his toes. The little boy’s eyes were open. Glazed over. Unseeing.

  I swallowed roughly as I stepped into the clearing. “What the hell happened?”

  Dorman turned to me, the color drained from his face and his lips parted. He had a dazed look in his eyes that spoke undoubtedly of shock. “I didn’t have a choice.” He was looking at me, but it was clear that he wasn’t seeing me. “Jonny—he was out of control. He attacked every person who came near him . . . anyone he could get his hands on. It took everyone to catch him. I—I—I had to—to—”

  “Hey,” I said, approaching Dorman with my hands upraised, palms out, like I was dealing with a wounded animal. With an unpredictable creature. “Hey there, Dorman, you’re alright. It’s all going to be alright.” I placed a hand on his shoulder and leaned in closer, weaving my head slowly this way and that until I managed to catch his faraway gaze.

  His eyes focused, and he shook his head. “I killed him.”

  I nodded, squeezing his shoulder through his raincoat. “I know. You did what had to be done.” I shot a quick glance around at all of the terrified and worried faces.

  Those closest to the clearing were Nejerets, immune to the infection. They’d linked arms, forming a living barrier. From the looks of it, all of the people within the circle were human and had blood on them—Jonny’s blood or their own, I wasn’t sure. But I suspected they were being held here by force. By that living barrier. Because they were believed to be infected now, too.

  “Let’s take care of the living,” I told Dorman. “We can deal with the dead later.”

  It took a few seconds, but Dorman finally blinked, then nodded. He’d just opened his mouth to address his people when someone screamed. It sounded like it came from the hospital.

  Both of our heads snapped toward the sound, and a second later, I lunged into a dead sprint. If another of the sick kids entered the rabid stage and somehow broke free of the sedative’s hold while literally every able-bodied person was out in the square, then there’d be nobody in the hospital to protect those who were too sick or injured to protect themselves. It would be a bloodbath. A full-on massacre.

  The ring of Nejerets parted as I hurtled toward them, as did the first few people standing behind them, but once I was well into the throng, I had to resort to less civil methods for ensuring my forward momentum continued. “Move!” I shouted, elbowing a man in the chest. I stiff-armed the woman behind him in the shoulder, and the people beyond them start
ed to get the point. Pretty soon, the masses parted like I was Moses.

  Another scream, pained this time. Bloodcurdling.

  I leaned forward and ran like hell. Once I was through the hospital’s doors, I didn’t have to go much further. The sight that greeted me was so startling, so wrong, that I stopped dead in my tracks and stared for a fraction of a second. Long enough for my jaw to drop. For my stomach to turn.

  A little girl, maybe six or seven, straddled the patient in the cot in the middle row, three beds in. It was a teenage boy with a cast on his right leg. A cast that seemed to have made it impossible for him to escape from the wraithlike child tearing into his neck and chest with her bloodstained fingernails. She was making an unearthly noise, a snarl mixed with a whine and a growl that no human vocal chords should ever have been capable of producing. A few patients huddled in the corners, and those who were more mobile stumbled toward the exit, panic blazing in their eyes. Several littered the floor and beds around the little girl’s current victim, spattered and smeared with blood. Apparently they’d tried to help. They’d failed.

  I heard footsteps pounding the pavement behind me, knocking me out of my momentary horrified stupor. I leapt over the first cot, then hurtled the next, body slamming into the little girl. She flew back several feet, landing askew on the next cot over. Luckily, it was empty. The one beyond it, not so much, and that patient, though untouched by the rabid child, didn’t look like she’d be up and moving on her own any time soon. It was too late for the boy, he was bleeding out as I stood there, but if I could stop the little girl from hurting anyone else—from infecting anyone else, as sure of a death as tearing out their throats with those clawlike fingers—it wouldn’t be a complete fail in my book.

  The girl scrabbled around until she was crouched on the cot on feet and hands. Blood was smeared all over her nightgown and clumped in her dirty blonde hair. Her eyes were so bloodshot it looked as though all the blood vessels in her eyeballs had burst. Maybe they had. I didn’t know the nitty-gritty of the disease’s symptoms.