Ridley let out a disgusted huff of breath. “You would destroy whole cities all over again? You would kill thousands more people just to keep the rest under control?”
“To keep the rest safe, yes. I think you’re already aware of the lengths I’ll—”
A tremor shuddered through the floor and shook the screens on the wall. Ridley raised her arms to steady herself, her eyes flying to the screens again. Specifically, the one showing the wasteland side of the wall. Not one, but two great cracks raced through the ground toward them. The room shuddered again—more violently this time—and the screen blinked before going blank.
“What have you done?” Alastair demanded as he skidded sideways. He slapped a hand against the wall to stop himself from ramming into it.
“I guess I can’t control my friends after all,” Ridley said, excitement lighting her nerves on fire. So far, everything was happening the way it was supposed to. As crazy as it had all sounded when she and Nathan had put the plan together, it seemed it may actually be working.
“How disappointing,” Alastair growled. “I honestly thought you’d choose your family, Ridley.”
The two minions gripped her arms, and Ridley was impressed to see that one of them had produced a syringe already. She pushed her magic outward—right out—and it shoved them away from her. “I did choose my family,” she said. “But then I remembered they’re both far more badass than I am, and they don’t actually need much help from me.”
Her magic hadn’t done as much as it would have if she’d had the time to roll it into a more concentrated ball, so the two men were up again already. Air, Ridley thought as her magic swirled around her, and she vanished in less than a heartbeat.
“Activate the standby subjects,” Alastair was saying into his commscreen as one of the minions launched toward a button beside the door and slammed his palm over it. Nothing happened. “Why isn’t it working?” Alastair barked at the minion. Ridley assumed there was supposed to be arxium gas filling the room now, but she wasn’t about to stick around to see if the malfunction corrected itself. She soared toward the gap beneath the door—
—just as two gunshots sounded somewhere out in the passageway. Ridley hesitated, which was silly because, in her current form, arxium was far more of a threat to her than gunshots.
The door flew open.
Crack! Down went the first minion. Crack! The second. And then crack! Alastair Davenport jerked backward, hit the wall, then slid to the floor.
27
Ridley was so shocked she didn’t make a move to slip out of the doorway. A figure stood there, gas mask concealing his or her face, arms raised, a small, black gun gripped between hands that shook ever so slightly.
Ridley’s first thought was Nathan. He was the one who’d spoken about getting rid of the director and the rest of the Shadow Society leaders. He knew where Alastair Davenport was right now. But that thought was replaced almost instantly by another when Ridley noticed the knitted, rainbow-striped sweater.
“Saoirse,” she gasped. Shock had forced her back into human form. Startled, Saoirse swung the gun toward her. Ridley ducked, but Saoirse stumbled backward and lowered the gun, stuttering something Ridley couldn’t make out behind the gas mask. “What the hell, Saoirse? Seriously, what the …” She gestured at the three bodies. “What did you just do?”
Saoirse tugged the gas mask off. “I … I did what had to be done. You weren’t … I didn’t know you were here. I didn’t know where anyone was after our attack on the wall failed. So I … I …” The floor shook again and something rattled above the ceiling. Saoirse grabbed hold of the doorframe as Ridley reached one hand toward the wall.
“It was you,” a strained voice said from across the room. “You were Jude’s informant.” Saoirse swung the gun back up to point at Alastair, who was slowly pushing himself up to sit against the wall. He had one hand pressed against the area just below his left shoulder. Blood seeped into his clothing.
“No,” Ridley said, launching herself forward and tugging Saoirse’s arm down. Another gunshot pierced the air, and she gasped in fright. But the bullet had gone through the floor. “Saoirse!” she exclaimed, squeezing Saoirse’s wrist until the gun clattered to the floor. “What are you doing? You’re not a killer!”
“He’s the director, Ridley. He wants to kill you!”
“I know.” A small part of Ridley was thinking she should just let Saoirse do it. Why was she trying to save the man who’d killed so many of her kind? But she’d decided this already, when they were first discussing all the details of this revolution. There would be casualties, and Ridley had accepted that, but she wasn’t okay with standing face to face with someone and ending his or her life.
“I thought Jude got rid of you,” Alastair said between labored breaths.
Ridley looked at him, his words only now beginning to sink in. You were Jude’s informant. I thought Jude got rid of you. “Wait,” Ridley said, releasing Saoirse’s wrist and stepping away from her. “You … you were the one who …” She shook her head and swallowed, but there was no denying the puzzle piece that had just slipped into place. “You told the Shadow Society about us? About the reserve. And all those other communities that were attacked.”
Saoirse pulled herself a little straighter and lifted her chin. “Because they needed a push,” she insisted. “They needed a reason to act. We couldn’t keep living like that, in our perfect little sanctuary out in the wastelands. It wouldn’t have lasted.”
“Are you … are you kidding?” Ridley’s hands were clammy, her skin hot and then cold and then hot again. “How could you do that? You got the reserve destroyed—you got people killed—because you wanted action? You wanted change?”
“We needed change. The society would eventually have found us and destroyed the reserve anyway.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do know that. I’ve lived through this before, Ridley. So did you, though you don’t remember it. You don’t remember the way everyone else was—was slaughtered.” Her voice hitched, and she took a deep breath before continuing. “At least this way, we were able to save almost everyone. I sent anonymous messages to the other communities, and I warned ours as well. I was already there, ringing the bell, when you arrived. It wasn’t like before. Last time, when your parents were killed, we were taken completely by surprise. And that’s what would have happened again one day if I didn’t act.”
“You warned us?” Ridley repeated. “Are you joking? You gave us like five seconds warning. You were at the bell at the same time I was. In fact, if I’d listened clearly to what magic was trying to tell me earlier in the day, I would have warned everyone before you did. Your warning barely gave us a head start.”
“Because they were faster than I realized! I was listening carefully all night, sending out my intention to magic and trying to get an idea of exactly where they were. But I couldn’t sense anything until it was almost too late.” She shook her head. “I told you before, Ridley. I can’t communicate with it the way you do. Even after years of meditation and listening and trying to converse with magic … it’ll never be easy for me the way it is for you.” The envy in her tone was unmistakable.
Ridley let out a shaky breath. “When did you do it? When did you tell them where to find us?”
Saoirse was quiet a moment. Then she sighed. “A day or two after you arrived at the reserve. I knew what kind of power you could wield, and I knew then that we had a real chance. We couldn’t continue hiding. We had to act. I had to make sure of it.”
Ridley’s mouth fell open. “That long? You knew for that long that the Shadow Society would be coming? You could have warned us days before the actual attack. Why did you wait?”
Saoirse pushed her hands through her hair. “Because it … it needed to be real. The fear. We had to be running from them, not just the idea of them, otherwise nothing would change.”
“You’re unbelievable.”
“You can judge me,
Ridley, but I don’t regret what I did. I’ve been living the fugitive life far longer than you have. It was time for change. Time to get rid of them—” she jerked her head toward Alastair “—and time to change the world.”
“You’re the one who tried to get me a few days ago,” Alastair said, struggling to sit a little straighter. “Outside Aura Tower.”
“Yes. That was me. We never knew who the director was before, otherwise I probably would have come for you sooner. But Ridley learned the truth from your son, and I knew then that I’d be getting rid of you myself.”
“This is crazy,” Ridley murmured. “How did I not know this about you? I thought you were so … peaceful. Instead you’ve been running around with firearms for days, trying multiple times to kill someone.”
“I am a peaceful person,” Saoirse said, her eyes pleading with Ridley to understand. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted for us. I’ve never used a gun before. I didn’t want to use one now. During the attack, after I left you outside the city, I went looking for him. I waited until I could sense him. I was going to fly down, grab him, whisk him away as air, and then drop him from a great height. But something … repelled me. There was arxium all over him. I realized I wouldn’t be able to get close. So I went back to your friend’s apartment and stole her gun. Then I started watching and following and trying to work up the nerve to use the darn thing. I discovered this place. I got inside easily enough and shut down the arxium gas system. Magic told me exactly which room to find the director in, and now … here we are.”
“So you never went looking for my dad like you said you would,” Ridley said. “And you never joined the others while they were trying to break through the wall. You just went off on your own little murderous mission.”
“Ridley—”
“After your whole speech to me about not acting alone, about trusting everyone else.” The world shuddered beneath her feet again. A horrible, shiver-inducing sound, like the screech of metal against metal, reached her ears.
“I told you to trust everyone to do their part,” Saoirse said. “This is my part. This is for the good of all elementals. I—I’m not a killer, Ridley, but someone has to do this. Someone has to—What is happening out there? Are we trying to break through the wall again?”
“We’re not doing anything,” Ridley told her, “since you’re apparently acting on your own now. But Nathan and the others are—Hey!” She shoved away from the wall as Alastair launched himself across the floor toward the fallen gun. She kicked it aside, which meant he grabbed her leg instead and tugged her down. She splashed to the floor in the form of water, slid away from him, and became human again near the bank of screens, at least half of which no longer displayed an image. Alastair scrambled for the gun again, but his fingers had barely scraped the edge of it when a piece of the ceiling fell and hit the edge of his head.
“Get out of here now,” Saoirse said, and then she vanished. Ridley knew she should follow. Saoirse clearly assumed she would follow.
There was a bang and a screech overhead, and another part of the ceiling began to crack. “Dammit,” Ridley muttered. This room was on the ground floor, and approximately ten stories worth of city wall and illegal research facility were about to cave in on her. Her magic pulsed beneath her skin, ready to transform her in an instant.
But she hesitated. Was Alastair dead? No. Ridley’s gaze caught on the slow rise and fall of his chest. She should go. She should leave him here. She wouldn’t have to kill him, but he would die anyway, and that was a win, right? But this was Archer’s father. His father. It was possible Archer and Alastair hated one another by now, but Ridley had lost a parent, and there was something inside her that couldn’t simply leave him here to die.
Her magic transformed her to air in a second. A crack split the ceiling from one side of the room to the other. She swooped forward—
—and someone raced into the room, hands raised, fingers splayed, magic forming a hemisphere shape in the air. Archer lifted his hands, and the shield of magic rose toward the ceiling, expanding to fill the room. The shield sparked where pieces of concrete, brick and metal struck it before being blown aside by the magic. But the pieces were growing larger, falling faster, as the facility collapsed on top of them. Archer let out a guttural cry, his arms shaking beneath the strain of holding the shield in place.
Ridley’s air self slipped past the shield and into the mass of falling rubble. Tornado, she whispered to the magic. Hurricane. Whatever you have to do, just throw this all AWAY!
There was a moment—less than a moment—when everything seemed to freeze. And then the chaos of falling concrete, metal, beds, computers, laboratory equipment, arxium, torture instruments, and everything else that made up this horrible place was hurled violently outward. Exposed now, Ridley watched the debris spill across the ground on the wasteland side of the wall.
She dropped back down. In the single, non-demolished room, Archer released the shield of magic and leaned over, shoulders heaving as he breathed heavily. There was nothing above them now but a sky full of tumbling dark clouds. Rain pattered down. The earth continued to shudder around them.
“Archer,” Ridley said once she’d pulled her magic back inside herself.
He straightened quickly, turning to face her, surprise clearing the exhaustion from his face. “Rid.”
Raindrops trickled down her face. The space between them swelled with every secret, every past mistake, every moment of hurt and betrayal. But the rain kept falling, and it seemed to Ridley that it was washing everything away, leaving behind only the desire to fall into Archer’s arms and never leave his embrace.
“I … I want to talk,” she said. “About everything. But—”
“But you have to go save the world?”
Ridley almost found it in her to laugh. “Well, I need to check first that my dad and grandfather got out from under all of this. I asked Nathan and Malachi and the others to focus all their earthquakes on this section of the wall to try to break through the—”
“I saw them,” Archer interrupted. “I was looking for the entrance to this place—I only just found out about it—and there was a tremor. I thought it was another earthquake, but then the ground exploded, like someone set off dynamite underneath it. This great big hole appeared and then out climbed Mr. Kayne and another Mr. Kayne.”
Ridley smiled. Her chest swelled with something like pride. “I told your dad they were badass.” The smile slipped away and she wiped rain from her eyes as she looked down at Alastair Davenport. “He’s still alive. But I don’t know if he’s … okay. Saoirse shot him and the others, and she was going to finish him off, but—”
“Saoirse?” Archer repeated in surprise.
“Yes. That’s another long story, but—”
“—you should go. Sounds like the others are attempting to break through the wall again. They probably need your help. I’ll get my father out of here as quickly as possible and then you’re free to go wild.”
Ridley nodded. Her magic drifted around her. She was about to vanish when instead she stepped forward, grasped Archer’s T-shirt, and pulled him closer. She pressed her lips against his. For several heartbeats, the rain-drenched kiss was the only thing that mattered, and Ridley wished she could climb inside this moment and hide here forever.
But another shudder of the ground reminded her that none of this was over yet. “I’ll find you afterwards,” she told Archer. Then she disappeared.
28
This revolution was pretty much all on Ridley now. There were eight other elementals involved, and they were doing what they could—they’d broken apart the section of the wall that housed the research facility, along with a decent portion on either side—but everyone was aware that they would fail again if Ridley didn’t have the kind of power that an heir with two super-powered parents should supposedly have.
They’d agreed that after freeing Ridley’s father and grandfather, Nathan and the others would send earthquakes through
the ground around the rest of the wall, cracking and breaking it apart as much as possible. The earthquakes were supposed to be controlled enough that the rubble fell toward the wastelands and not toward the city. Which basically meant they would be begging the elemental magic around them to help make that happen.
Ridley would then follow and burn through everything that fell. She could, of course, burn the wall while it was still standing, but that had never been part of the plan in case enormous, fiery pieces of arxium fell toward the city instead of away from it. That certainly wouldn’t leave anyone feeling favorably disposed toward the elementals who’d just revealed themselves to everyone.
She soared above the demolished research facility, waiting until she could no longer sense Archer or his father nearby. Then she shot down, transforming into a blazing ball of fire. She struck the rubble and fragmented, sending flames racing across the ruin to consume all the arxium. Further, faster, hotter. Burning, burning, burning. Barely a minute had passed when she pulled herself back together and spun upward as air to see her progress. An inferno blazed across the entire ruined section, leaping up toward the intact parts of the wall on either side.
There were more cracks further along, and other colossal sections of wall screeching and groaning and toppling to the ground. Ridley raced toward them, ready to burn—then slammed up against an invisible force and went tumbling backward on the wind. She held her elemental form this time, recognizing the odd magical force she’d knocked into as another elemental. An unnatural elemental.
Dammit. Alastair was knocked out and his lab was gone. Doc was probably gone too. They couldn’t possibly have injected new volunteers in the time since this attack began. And it couldn’t be Lilah, because if so, Ridley would have been able to sense her.
Elemental Heir (Ridley Kayne Chronicles Book 3) Page 22