Divided: The Alliance Series Book Four (30 page)

“I think I’d be worried if you could break down a wall,” I said shakily.

“The sciras,” he said, “it should have worked.” He braced his shoulder against the door, but it didn’t shift an inch. He cursed, drew back and threw himself against it, making me jump in alarm.

“Jesus, Kay, calm down!”

“Calm—” He looked at me, eyes wide. If anything, Kay looked like
he
was the one who’d been kidnapped by monsters. Bruises marked his face and neck, and there was a half-healed cut on his forehead. His skin was so pale, the bruises and the shadows under his eyes were even more vivid. “We’re fucking locked in.”

No shit,
I was tempted to say, along with
you could at least act like you’re pleased to see me for half a second.
I gave myself a mental shake. We were both utterly screwed, for God’s sake. And Kay hadn’t looked so terrified in all the time I’d known him.

“Do you have your communicator?”

He uncurled one tightly clenched fist to dig in his jacket pocket. “Shit.
Shit.”

“Oh, God. It’s broken?”

“Water must have got into it.” He threw it at the wall, where it smashed into pieces, swearing in languages I didn’t know.

“Kay…” I’d never seen him on the edge of losing control. He paced around the room, hammering at gaps in the wall, shoving at the door again. It didn’t budge.

“Ada.” He turned to me, breathing heavily. “Sorry.” He took a couple of steps towards me.

“I’m not overly happy about being locked in either, you know.” A lump rose in my throat. “They killed Gervene. They probably killed the others, too.”

“Aric,” he said. “How did he end up here?”

“They caught him in the Passages when they were looking for me.” I shuddered all over. “They want me to dominate Enzar. They have a crazy scheme.”

“Yeah?” He ran a hand through his hair, which, like mine, was soaked in swamp water. His hands were dark with blood, the knuckles shredded from pounding on the door. “Always with the crazy schemes.” He closed his eyes, then focused on me. “I’m sorry. I should have known this would happen.”

“My second imprisonment in a day,” I said, in an attempt to lighten the mood. “Can’t say I care for the décor in here.”

“You were in here before?”

“Until a wyvern took me for a ride.” I half perched on the edge of the bed. “They threw me out the window, can you believe it? I really pissed off the StoneKing.”

“StoneKing?” He arched an eyebrow. “Because that doesn’t have ‘ego’ written all over it.”

I half-smiled despite myself, my chest aching. I’d missed him.

“He’s raving mad,” I said. “Yeah. He’s been dragging us across the Multiverse for days searching for a signal that probably doesn’t even exist. I wrecked his plans when I destroyed their—whatever it was they opened doorways with.”

“Auros,” he said. “Two of the bastards escaped onto Valeria. Said you pushed them through a door.”

I gaped at him. “They—it was when I tried to escape in the Passages, I didn’t know what I was doing. They—they hurt people, didn’t they? God…”

“It’s not your fault,” he said, and I remembered him saying the exact same thing when I’d killed with magic the first time. I whimpered as guilt rose, choking me.
I couldn’t save the others.

“Ada,” he said, softly. “You’re all right.”

Tears pricked my eyes. His arms wrapped around me as I sobbed for Gervene, for the other people who’d lost everything and died out here in this hostile world. For the people I’d unintentionally put in danger.

For everyone whose lives the Stoneskins had destroyed.

“We have to get out of here,” he said. “Your brother adapted the Chameleons with new tech. A source called sciras. Now there are a couple of Chameleons that can make you a shield as well as invisible, but not at the same time.”

“Jeth did that?” I wiped my eyes. “I’ve never even heard of sciras.”

“Neither had I, until I looked up all the sources. I was trying to find a way to get you away from those bastards, and I stole it from Central—and adamantine, too. And bloodrock.”

“You…
you
stole from Central?”

“Your brother’s the one who set up that signal,” he said. “But the message must have been delayed.”

“Oh, God,” I said. “The bastards. The StoneKing told me he set up a bomb. He said it would kill all of you before you found me. You didn’t…”

He was as unreadable as ever, though his fists were clenched, his body tense.

“No,” he said. “I got lucky. I think some of the others survived…”

The world tilted. More lives taken by the Stoneskins. I leaned back and my head struck the wall.

“Ada. You okay?”

“Yeah…” I rubbed the back of my head, confused. “That should have hurt more than it did. Wait, did you transfer sciras over to me?”

“I hoped I could,” he said, glancing down at where his hand lay over mine, “but it still won’t help us kill all of them. I can’t fight more than one of them, and I can’t bring down the door.”

“Maybe both of us could,” I said, standing. “We have to do something. That world-key must be more powerful than those Passage pieces they were using, if they think they can get directly to Enzar.”

“Auros,” he said. “Must be true. How were they navigating?”

“The StoneKing has a built-in tracker,” I said. “I think he got it before they did whatever they did to him.”

“Damn.”

“Auros? Is that the metal in the world-keys?”

He nodded. “Yeah—same stuff in the Passages. I tried to amplify it. I talked to a scientist on Valeria who knew about doorways and he said only magic-wielders can make world-keys, because you need to pick up on the signal of an individual world. Or a magic-wielder, I guess. They’re drawn to other sources, too, that’s why I kept opening doorways right next to the door they opened on Vey-Xanetha. But you can’t usually do it within the same world because the signal gets muddled, and you can only jump between two worlds of the same level without the Passages.”

“Like Conner did,” I said, nodding. “The Stoneskins wouldn’t know. It’s why they’re using their own tracker, but it keeps bringing them back here, for some reason. That reminds me.”

I told him what the StoneKing had said about imprisoning the Vox, and Kay’s incredulous expression matched mine when I’d found out.

“They were charging the auros, at the expense of an entire world?” He shook his head. “Jesus Christ. They’re batshit crazy.”

“I know,” I said. “Hell, maybe they were the ones who created the chasm in the first place. The one that destroyed Vey-Xanetha’s old world.”

“Maybe,” he said. “The chasm… I forgot to ask. It’s like a between-world, but it leads nowhere. I tapped into it when I amplified the world-key the first time around…” He trailed off, running a hand through his hair. “Theories won’t help us here, but the StoneKing isn’t an amplifier, right? He doesn’t control where the world-key, or auros, leads him. Even if he sensed a magic signal.”

“He follows the signals,” I said. “No one’s mentioned an amplifier. But the world-key is drawn to the nearest magic source. Like when we came here, it was where someone had just used magic. Those dead wyvern.”

“Dead?”

“Killed with Alliance stunners,” I said.

“That… actually just happened.” He shook his head. “We must have missed each other by hours at most.”

“Damn,” I said, shaking my head, too. “And I found your message in Cethrax as well. I’m starting to think the Multiverse is messing with us.”

The faintest hint of a smile touched his mouth. “Yeah, I get that feeling a lot,” he said. “Wish I’d been able to leave a default setting on the world-key that’d knock them into the middle of the abyss.”

“Wanna try? I’d rather die fighting than in here.”

His expression darkened. “You’ve no idea. Sorry I freaked out on you. You don’t need that right now.”

“No,” I said, sucking in a breath, trying to focus on him, not the rest, just for a second. I’d feared, the whole time I’d been imprisoned, that I’d never see him again. “I need
you.”

The tiniest flicker of a smile stirred at the corner of his mouth.

“But first,” I said, “we’re going to take those bastards down.”

“Or die trying.” He smiled faintly at me, eyes burning with a fierce light. “Okay. Want to try breaking the door down?”

Crash.
I jumped, and Kay turned to the window. “That came from outside.”

So it had. It sounded like rocks sliding against one another. Or like someone was—

Crash.

The ground shook, the walls trembled. I joined Kay at the window, trying to see. Human-sized shapes moved below… what had happened to the other prisoners? I shifted, trying to see, and the walls quaked again, as did the floor. The whole building felt like it was about to fall off a cliff.

A flash of light lit up the darkening sky. Blue light, not magic.

“Hell,” said Kay. “Bastard must have figured out how to use the world-key.” He shoved at the wall again.

More crashes sounded below, and then the noise of someone running upstairs. Kay ran to the door as it burst open.

“Some rescuer you are!” Nell shoved him aside and had wrapped me in her arms before I could blink.

“How did you get here?”

“Another doorway,” she said, hugging me tightly. “Thank you for leaving the other device behind… the Alliance were
quite
understanding of my need to borrow it, after a fashion. Some idiotic policy on not allowing Earth civilians to access the Passages.”

“Nell,” I gasped. “I can’t breathe.”

“Sorry.” She drew back, checking me all over. Another bright blue flash. “Whatever they’re doing out there, it distracted them. I had no trouble breaking in.”

“They’re opening a doorway,” said Kay, heading for the door. “We’re outnumbered, but we can’t let them go offworld, especially to Enzar.”

“Enzar?”
Nell’s eyes narrowed. “They’re not. Tell me they weren’t taking you back there.”

“They were,” I said, pulling back. “I have to stop them. They were going to use me to win them the Empire. The StoneKing’s seriously insane.”

Kay was already out the door, and I hurried after him, Nell at my heels. We descended the spiralling stairs as fast as we could.

“Of course they’re batshit,” said Kay. “They’ve really been wandering around the universes at random, with no plan?”

“Apparently so,” I said breathlessly. “They had a plan, just not a well-thought-out one.”

“Figures,” said Kay. “They were going to kill you because you broke their auros?”

“The StoneKing was. They all do as he says.”

“Of course they do,” he muttered.

No one was in the entrance hall. It was eerily quiet, unguarded, and dark. The hairs rose on my arms.

“Everyone must be at the doorway,” I said, picking up the pace. “Damn—if he’s opening doors at random…”
Like Valeria.
Like I’d done.

Nell had knocked right through the front doors. They weren’t made of stone, but bone-coloured wood. And she’d used the sciras booster-thing to literally break down the doors.

“In case we die, I should probably say you’re awesome,” I said to her, as she kicked the remains of the door out the way to make a path.

“We are
not
going to die,” she said, “and you are not going to Enzar. I’m taking you back to the Passages. The other doorway’s not too far from here.”

“We can’t leave them out there!” I said. “The other prisoners were snatched up, same as me, from the Passages.”

“Aric,” said Kay. “Figures I’d run into that bastard again. But Ada—we can’t fight them alone. We should get backup from the Alliance.”

I turned to him. If we waited, more people might die. Another blue flash lit up the sky, and someone screamed.

Ignoring the others’ shouts, I sprinted in that direction. It was just around the corner… and blood spattered the marshy ground.

“Shit,” I whispered.

They were dead. The humans had been lined up, bodies marked with terrible wounds—crushed limbs and skulls—stark red in the blazing light coming from their left. The Stoneskins were gathered in a wide circle around what at first glance looked like a glass panel. A doorway. The StoneKing stood beside it, making swiping motions.

“The hell is he doing?” Kay’s voice was a whisper. “That’s not how you use the world-key…”

The scene changed, and half the circle of Stoneskins was obscured by fog.

All heads turned in our direction.

Oh, crap.

“Get behind me,” Nell snapped.

“You can’t fight them by yourself,” I said. “Nor you—Kay!”

Magic sparked from his hands, right at the StoneKing, but the other Stoneskins moved to form a wall before he knocked the world-key loose.

The two giants broke away from the group and advanced on us. One grabbed for Nell, the other for Kay.