Blood Metal Bone: An epic new fantasy novel, perfect for fans of Leigh Bardugo
Page 28
Karr fumbled to shut it, but the doors were too damned slow.
“Fire!” the guard in the back yelled.
Bullets sprayed. Karr threw himself to the side, out of reach. Markam and Azariah hit the floor just as the bullets slammed into the back wall of the elevator, landing themselves in the metal. They were red-tipped, zapping with a spark of blue that left a smoke mark on the metal.
“Stunner bullets,” Karr said, as the identical click of ten guns reloading sounded out.
“Az,” Markam said. “We need you, now.”
“I can’t,” she said.
He ripped off her gloves. “You must.”
Her eyes met Sonara’s as she spun.
The pop of the guns going off sounded out, but the bullets never landed. Because at the same time, with a scream of terror, Azariah threw her palms together, as if she held a blade, pointing it towards the guards.
There was a satisfying crack of electricity. The bullets melted as a bolt of her power spiraled from her palms, creating a sheet before her just as the doors slid shut.
Silence, once again, as if someone had simply put a pause on chaos.
“I… I did it,” Azariah said in a breath. She held up her own hands, a triumphant grin on her face as if she’d found the key to her joy once more.
“What the hell?” Sonara whirled on Karr.
“They’re using stunner bullets,” Karr explained, plucking one of them from the back wall of the elevator. He dropped it to the floor with a tiny ping. “Cade gave the order to take you alive. Get hit by one of these, and you’re done.” He tapped the lowest button on the paneled wall three times, in rapid succession. “It’s not responding. They’re going to meet us on every level. They can use the stairs faster than we can ride on this. They’ll be waiting.”
“Stairs,” Markam said. “We could have taken the damned stairs?”
“We’d have made too much noise, given ourselves away!”
“More than this?” Markam yelped. As he spoke, the elevator slowed again.
“How long?” Sonara asked. “How long before the doors close, once they’re opened again?”
“Twenty seconds, give or take,” Karr said.
The elevator jolted to a sudden stop.
Blast, Sonara hissed in her mind. Her curse slammed against its cage, knowing full well that enemies awaited them just behind those slow-opening doors.
“Don’t move,” Markam hissed as the doors slid wide.
The guards were already there, just as Karr said. Ten in number, their weapons raised and ready. But they paused, confusion twisting their features.
“It’s empty, Jacques,” the guard at point grunted.
Beside him, a lithe woman stepped forward, her large eyes narrowing. “It can’t be. They were just there.”
Sonara saw it then… a shift in the air before her. Like a rippling wall of fabric where the elevator doors remained open, bathed in Markam’s Trickster curse.
Twenty seconds before the doors would close again, and the elevator would be on the move. Sonara’s heartbeat hammered in her throat.
Hold it, Markam, she prayed, even to the goddesses, for they were sitting beasts in this metal box, and what good could one sword do against ten soldiers with Wanderer guns?
Markam grunted behind her, so softly she almost didn’t catch it.
Goddesses, it was near impossible how much power he’d used today. She’d always known him to be strong, but he’d never had a true mission, never put his mind to something like this.
The female guard tilted her head, as if she’d caught the sound of his grunt, but still saw nothing inside the elevator. She stepped forward, eyes narrowing, not two breaths from Sonara’s face.
Hold the illusion, Sonara begged Markam. Her hand squeezed over Lazaris’ pommel. She didn’t dare breathe.
“I think…” The woman stepped forward, her rifle almost touching Sonara’s chest. “There’s something off about—”
Markam gasped, and the illusion broke as his strength gave all the way out.
“FIRE!” the woman yelled.
Sonara lashed out with Lazaris, the masterful blade shoving the rifle to the side just as the woman fired.
Behind her, Sonara heard Markam yelp as the bullet hit home.
Sonara lunged just out of the doorway and sliced the woman’s hand clean off.
Blood sprayed as Lazaris split right through bone. The gun fell with it, and Sonara used the momentary lapse to wrap her arm around the woman’s throat, yanking her backwards and using her body as a shield as her own soldiers fired in retaliation.
Three red bullets slammed against the woman’s chest as the doors slid shut.
Her body was a dead weight in Sonara’s arms.
“You…”
Sonara turned to find Karr wide-eyed, pressed against the elevator wall like a child in the face of a monster.
“You cut off her hand.”
Sonara shrugged as she let the woman crumple at her feet, alive but unconscious. “Better a hand than a head.”
He just blinked as the elevator dropped another floor.
A ding sounded out, and Sonara readied herself for a final wave of attacks—this time, without Markam’s power.
He was slumped on the floor, unconscious, drool already pooling onto his chest. But Azariah looked down at him as if she were looking at a beautifully chiseled statue, instead of roadkill left to rot beneath the desert suns.
“He… he saved me,” she said. “He dove in front of me and took the bullet.”
He’d never done that for her, Sonara realized. She nodded, surprised to find relief that the princess was still by her side, a comrade in arms. Perhaps even a friend. “Get your power ready, Princess. We’re going to need it.”
Azariah flexed her hands and turned to face the doors.
They slid open soundlessly.
But instead of nine guards waiting for them, there was only one.
The towering Wanderer woman who had stood beside Karr at the Gathering and screamed when Sonara drove her blade through his chest.
“Jameson,” Karr blurted out, stepping away from the elevator wall.
Sonara eyed the scene quickly. The woman stood in a small hallway, a locked door about ten paces behind her; the entrance to the storage bay, where Sonara felt that pull towards the energy source.
Off to the right, another locked door. The paneling was removed and messed with, the very same way Karr had done when they’d snuck aboard the ship.
Sonara could hear pounding fists behind it, muffled shouts as guards tried to break through.
Jameson had gotten here first, it seemed. And jammed the door from the outside.
Her skin was tan, muscles rippling down her bare arms as she reached up to tap the visor on her helmet. It slid open, revealing her face beyond.
“Kingston,” she said. “What the hell are you doing?”
Fear filtered from her aura, but as she looked at Karr, there was something else there. Desperation, a need to save him. Familial love, the kind Sonara held for Jaxon, for Soahm…
Her accent was similar to Karr’s, lifting upwards at the end of her words. But there was knowing in her eyes, as if she were staring at an old friend. Her pistol wavered as she saw him, then steadied again as she looked at Sonara, Markam and Azariah.
“Don’t. Please.” Karr held out his hands. “Jameson, this isn’t what it looks like.”
“Then explain it to me. Because it looks to me like you’re walking free, navigating a group of Dohrsarans through your own ship.”
“I’m not a prisoner,” Karr explained. “Step aside, Jameson. Please.”
The woman’s gaze landed on Sonara, eyes narrowing and hands sliding the safety of her pistol back. A series of beeps sounded, and then the gun was glowing blue, Jameson lifting it to fire.
“Dammit. Put your weapon down,” Karr commanded. “That’s an order.”
But Jameson did not relent. “What did they do to you, Karr?”
“Nothing but help me see the truth. My entire life, we’ve been comrades. But I’d be more inclined to call us family, Jameson. You and me, we can out-drink all the rest of them.”
The woman gave a nervous smile from inside her helmet.
And though Sonara sensed fear… Jameson’s aura also revealed hesitation. A decision to trust Karr, already made. A flower not quite ready to blossom, but swaying towards the kiss of sunlight, leaning closer to the call of the wind.
Her hands shook. “Tell me why I shouldn’t kill them, Karr. They kidnapped you. That one,” she glared at Sonara, “tried to kill you just days ago.”
Karr walked past Sonara, his hands outstretched. “It’s true. But it was supposed to happen. I can’t explain how I know. But it’s the way things were always meant to go. I’ve seen other parts of this planet. I’ve spent time exploring it, and… it’s changed me. Cade’s mission is a death wish. Not only for this planet, but for so many more of them. What Geisinger plans to do with the Antheon could bring about the end.”
“The end of what?” Jameson asked.
“Order,” Karr said. “It’s going to change people. It’s going to cause chaos across the stars.”
Her eyes narrowed. She lifted her gun again, swinging it towards Sonara. “You’ve never stood against Cade before. Not once. How am I to know they’re not forcing you to do this against your will? That whatever they’ve done to you since taking you isn’t what’s driving this?”
“Drop your sword,” Karr said. “Sonara. Do it.”
“Like hell I will,” Sonara hissed. It was a fool’s request. But as she said the words, Jameson’s aura changed, leaning towards the darker decision. The one that would end with Sonara and Markam and Azariah bleeding out with Wanderer bullets in their chests. With a deep sigh, Sonara lowered Lazaris.
Karr took a step towards his crew member. Who he claimed to be his friend. “She’s not my enemy. She’s not yours. You’ve always helped me see the lighter side of things. You’ve always been there with me, helping me understand that life is what you make of it.”
The woman’s hands were shaking now. The pistol was wavering in her grip, its blue glow beginning to fade as it powered down.
Karr took another step.
He was only an arm’s length away.
“You’ve known since the beginning that what Cade is doing here is wrong. You did nothing to stop it.”
“He made me swear,” she whispered.
Then she was trembling full-out as Karr reached her and took the barrel of the pistol in his outstretched hands. But still, she did not let go.
“He made me swear that I wouldn’t tell you. Because if I did… God, he knows you so well, Karr, it’s like Cade knew you wouldn’t stand for it. He made me swear I wouldn’t let you screw with the job. That I’d do what it took to stop you if you tried.”
“Bastard,” Karr hissed. The hideous word made Sonara’s insides churn. “And you chose to side with him? Like all the rest of them?”
Jameson nodded. “Of course I sided with him. He’s my captain. He gave me a home onboard this ship. A place to lay my head.”
“Then you’ll have to shoot me. Right now. If you want to stop me, Jameson… go ahead. Do it.”
The soldier released a shaking breath and dropped her gun, tears in her eyes. “I sided with him then, Karr. I sided with him because he promised it would make a better life for you. For all of us.” Tears fell from her eyes. “But you know I’m not the kind to keep a bloody promise. I’m done. The second I saw you again, I knew I was done.”
Karr whooshed out a breath, and then he was gripping her tight by the shoulder. She returned the gesture, and suddenly her aura was pleasant, like freshly dyed silk drying on the wind.
The locked door began to buckle, as if they were hitting it with an axe.
“They’re going to break through, Jameson,” Karr said. “And you’ll have to explain why you didn’t take their side. We’re taking the escape pod, getting out of here after we shut this mission down. Come with us.”
Jameson shook her head. “I can’t. I already made mistakes, Karr. I knew it was wrong, but I stood down there beside your brother and let him do… the horrors that he and Rohtt and Geisinger planned. I won’t live the rest of my life knowing I had a hand in it.”
“So what, then?” Karr asked.
She stepped aside, motioning for them to move past her. “Go. I’ll do my best to slow them.”
“Jameson—”
“Go, kid. You’ve always been a thorn in my side. Defiant and self-glorifying, and so damn stubborn I don’t know how anyone could stand against it.” She pressed a gloved hand to his cheek. “Go. I’ll see you when the stars go dim.”
“Please,” Karr said.
She nudged him away. “You can stop him. I know you can, kid.”
Her words were final. Sonara sensed it on the woman’s aura, as much as she saw it in Karr’s slumping shoulders as he backed away. Then he was running past her, stopping before the storage-bay door as he tried to bypass the locks. Karr cursed. But then another fumble of his fingers, and the door to the storage bay hissed open.
Darkness yawned from within. A massive room, unlit.
“Inside,” Karr commanded. Sonara and Azariah dragged Markam’s limp body along, heaving against his unconscious weight.
But Karr paused on the threshold, looking back at Jameson.
“Please,” he said.
She just smiled again. “Good luck.”
The door beside Jameson blasted open with a cloud of smoke.
Cade stepped through, Rohtt beside him, along with a flood of guards.
“Karr!” Cade shouted, as Karr stepped inside and slammed the button just inside the storage bay. The door began to slide shut, sealing them inside.
Just before it closed, Sonara saw Jameson root herself in the center of the hall, her rifle held in her arms as if it was the last time she’d ever hold it.
“I can’t let you go, Captain.” She pointed her gun at him, and held it steady.
Cade lifted his own rifle. They heard a gunshot, just as the door slid closed like the lid of a casket.
Karr dropped to his knees, not knowing in whose chest the bullet had landed.
Just as Sonara turned, staring out at the dark storage bay, her eyes wide.
Because he was here.
Soahm was inside.
She’d recognize the aura anywhere, like it had been a part of her all along.
Like sun-kissed skin and wind-blown waves, the salt that hung, ever present, in the Soreian air.
“Soahm,” Sonara breathed.
The aura was overwhelming.
The others called out to her, but she was already rushing forward, sprinting past waiting rows of Wanderer machines chained down in their loading spaces. The room was massive, easily half of what made up the entire ship.
Her footsteps echoed like the retorts of bullets as she ran past crates and metal boxes packed into shelves against the walls, so many strange auras pinging at her from all around. Guns sat in their locked casings, the rifles that had brought down her people, shot them in cold blood. She slowed as the aura grew stronger.
Left, her curse sang.
Sonara turned, walking past shelving full of Gazers like the ones she’d often chased on Duran. Everything together, all of it, was like piecing together the answers to the attack. And everything leading up to it. The elements that had enslaved Jaxon, and all her people.
But Sonara cared not, in this moment.
For Soahm’s aura, the memory of him, had never been so strong as it was here, now.
Twenty paces, her curse said.
Sonara slowed, searching for him. A tan and handsome face, pressed among the crates, or his body tied and broken from torture, or perhaps a jail cell, where he sat waiting…
The aura stopped at the entrance to a massive silver orb; the escape pod Karr had mentioned would be their way out.
The door was just bar
ely ajar.
“Soahm,” Sonara called softly.
She tasted salt on her tongue, not from her curse, but from the wetness of tears spilling down her cheeks, landing on her lips.
He was just inside. Her brother was only a few paces away.
“Sonara!” Azariah called out. “Wait!”
Sonara scarcely heard the princess’ voice as she walked forward, closing the gap.
With trembling hands, she reached out to grasp the heavy side of the escape pod’s door. With a mighty heave… it opened.
Soahm’s aura rushed out in a wave.
Here.
“Soahm,” she said again, his name like a promise on her lips, a promise she’d kept for ten long years, every hour of every day since he went missing. She swore she would find him. Bring him home.
But the escape pod was empty.
“It can’t be,” Sonara said. “No.”
She crawled inside, scrambling over the first row of seats. They were worn and emptied of their stuffing. Ancient. Smelling of decay and dust. Another row of seats, and then a pilot’s chair, a dashboard with shoddy-looking tech. No spaces to hide, no spaces for Soahm to be waiting within.
“Where is he?” she growled.
She turned, abandoning the escape pod. She marched across the storage bay, striding past Markam’s unconscious figure, past Azariah who sat on a crate beside him, until she reached Karr. She grasped the collar of his shirt. “Where is he?”
“What?’ Karr asked. “Sonara, I—”
“I SAID, WHERE IS HE?”
She slammed him against the metal wall of the storage bay. His head hit with a sickening crack, but he did not cry out. He let her shove him against it, curling his shirt in her fists.
“He’s here. I can sense his aura, all over this hellish place.”
Karr’s eyes were desperate as she growled and pulled him away from the wall, then turned and hauled him back towards the pod where Soahm’s aura waited, whispering, Here I am, Sonara. Find me.
She shoved Karr to his knees, then whirled and pointed at the pod. “Where is my brother?”
“Sonara.”
His palms were face-up. Pleading. She removed her sword—Soahm’s sword that she’d stolen from Soreia on her way out—and pointed it at Karr. She no longer cared if he was a Shadowblood, no longer cared that he’d helped her into this very ship. He’d once carried Soahm’s lingering scent as he’d bled. He had to know something.