Secret Worlds (479 page)

“We’re from the South, near old Nevada,” Alex finally gave him, “and we’re here to rescue our girls.”

The man’s square jaw jutted out and his eyes narrowed. “Your girls?”

Alex shrugged. “Not all of them. But it’s not like we’d take ours home and leave the rest to suffer with these Council bastards.” His low voice throbbed with honest emotion. “So if you’re going to shoot us, shoot us. If not, back the fuck off so we can finish this and get home.”

“Old Nevada, huh? Wanna be more specific?”

“We call it Fort Nevada. Southern end of Zone Five, far away from everything.”

“Fort, huh? Military group?”

Alex nodded, the movement slow and deliberate.

“You think you’re strong enough to take on the Council?”

He shrugged. “We already have. They just don’t know it yet.” It was the truth.

The man searched Alex’s face with a long look. “I thought you were Council yourself, or maybe LDS. Too well-provisioned to be one of us.” The man pointedly looked at their gear. He stepped back and the bow went down, although he still didn’t remove his fingers from the trigger. “I guess Fate’s working in both our favors today. One of those girls, the tall one, she’s ours. And we mean to get her back.”

The two men stood, silent, weighing each other.

“I’m Roddric,” the Neo-barb offered.

“Alex.” He nodded at each of them in turn. “Jackson. Lena.”

Roddric turned to the others, and with a lift of his chin, told them to back off.

She stepped away as soon as the Neo-barb’s arms unfolded, side-stepping closer to Alex.

Roddric kept his focus on Alex. “Plan?”

Alex hesitated. Roddric’s fingers tightened on the crossbow. Alex raised a hand. “Trust comes hard.”

“It does,” Roddric agreed. “You got a plan, or you wanna sit back here and watch us?”

“We have a plan.” Alex looked at Lena. He arched a brow at her.

Jackson made a noise of protest, but Lena grinned.

“I’m the plan,” she murmured matter-of-factly. “I’m going to paralyze the guards. Then while all of you finish them, I’m going to deal with the collars.”

“You’re going to—” Roddric shifted. “You’re like Rose.”

“Rose is your girl out there?” Alex asked.

“Yeah. She can take any machine, no matter what, charge it up. Make it work. You like her?”

Lena made a more-or-less face. Of course, she meant more. Much more.

“You’re going to take out all of those guards?” The man who’d been holding her spoke.

“I said that, yes,” she answered, then looked at Alex. “I’m ready when you are.”

She turned and picked her way to the wall of the canyon. She peered around and marked all four guards. The men fanned out around her. If the guards turned, they’d all be seen.

She slipped a breath in, eased it out, and let her vision blur, reaching to the Dust, sharing what she wanted. The Dust raced through the men’s bodies, eager and quick.

Seconds later, she pulled back to herself and nodded at Alex and Roddric.

Roddric looked at her, then at Alex. He took a deep breath. Being told the men would be paralyzed and being willing to believe it and step out into the line of fire were apparently two different things.

She rolled her eyes, bent to scoop up a rock, and threw it at the back of one of the guards. She missed. The rock clattered past him and rolled away toward the river. Two of the girls nearest the guard looked up, startled and blinking as they shivered. The guards, of course, were still.

Alex and Jackson stepped out. She joined them, with Roddric only a step behind. His men moved in on the guards. The Council men collapsed to the ground in a flurry of metal glinting in the sunlight and four fanning sprays of blood.

Someone whooped in excitement. “She did it! She really did it!”

Lena ignored them. She had tunnel vision, moving straight to the smallest girl with her oddly canted chin. Lena smiled at her and made soft noises of comfort as she deactivated the collar. The girl’s eyes went wide when Lena reached down and fumbled with the collar. She couldn’t get the little hollow for a finger or thumb print to respond to her, so she wiggled her hand in the tight space between the collar and the girl’s neck to protect her skin and instructed the Dust to part the collar. The heat released by the Dust as it complied went a step beyond merely painful, but Lena considered it a small price to pay. She pulled the broken collar apart and tossed it to the ground. Her arms went around the little girl.

“It’s okay. It’s okay now. You’re safe.”

The girl resisted for a moment, unable to keep from looking at the nearest guard, his blood reddening the rocks around him.

“No, no.” Lena told her. “Look at me. Look at me.”

The girl brought her enormous brown eyes up to Lena.

“I won’t let them hurt you. I’m Lena. What’s your name?”

The girl regarded her for a moment. She glanced away to take in the other girls sitting near them. When she looked back, she answered in a voice so breathlessly soft Lena wasn’t sure she’d heard her.

“Missa?” Lena asked.

“No.” The voice was soft, but stronger. “Marissa.”

“Marissa. Okay. I’m going to put you down, now, Marissa. But I want you to stay right here with us, okay? We’re going to take you away from these bad men, and keep you safe.”

Marissa nodded.

Lena sank down. She knelt on the rocks and settled Marissa beside her, her back to the dying or dead man. A chestnut-haired girl was bold enough to dart forward. She looked at Marissa’s collar on the ground and pulled at her own with one shaking hand.

Lena nodded and reached out, deactivating the collar a second before she slid her hand between the collar and the girl’s skin. She separated the collar and pulled it from the girl’s neck, wincing at the oozing blisters hidden beneath it.

“Oh, Dust.” Tears sprang to her eyes, and she promised the girl, “I’m going to fix those for you as soon as everyone is free. I’m going to make sure you’re okay.”

The girl nodded and slid over to sit tight beside Marissa.

Lena turned to the next, and the next, pulling off collar after collar, ignoring the painful burns she inflicted on her own hands. She tried to place hoarse and whispered names to hollow-eyed faces as she winced at the injuries beneath and around the collars. Her rage grew.

She kept it buried deep, smiling reassuringly at the girls even as she wanted to rise and go to the guards to beat them, kick them, defile their bodies for what they’d done to these girls. For what cause? Because they were different? Because they had the audacity to be born?

Lena blinked away tears of anger and frustration to stare at the ring of solemn faces around her. The men, Alex, Jackson, Roddric, and the others, encircled Lena and the girls.

Rose stood in front of her, tall and proud before lowering herself into a squat. She stood the tallest and, with her appearance placing her near Lena’s own twenty-four years, easily the oldest. She was the last of them.

Lena deactivated the collar and pulled it off.

Rose blinked. She sucked in a deep, cleansing breath to center herself. Had she been the newest addition? No wounds hid under her collar. Lena’s gaze dropped down, noting the bruises on her chest, and what appeared to be the semi-circular imprint of teeth, disappearing under the ‘V’ of her prison shirt.

Lena looked up, meeting Rose’s hard, angry eyes. “Do you have any wounds needing attention?”

Rose turned her lips down in a derisive snarl. “Nothing you can fix.”

Before Lena could explain, Rose stood and looked around. She found Roddric and went to him. They wrapped their arms around each other in silence.

Lena looked to Alex. “Do we have time for me to heal them? Some of their wounds are—”

The man closest to her grunted. A warm mist sprayed across her face. The little girl across from the man gasped wetly and slumped into the girl beside her.

The gunshot rang out and echoed off the cliffside.

Before Lena could catch her breath, a body forced her to the ground. She could hear shouts and shots.

“Where is he?” Alex demanded.

“The cliff, the cliff!” Unfamiliar voices.

“Where?”

It doesn’t matter
. She desperately scrabbled at the man on top of her.
It doesn’t matter to me
. Jackson? “Jackson! Let me up!”

“No, Lena! Stay down!” His hand pushed on the back of her head, trying to force her down.

“Lena! Stay down, dammit!” Alex shouted at her. Then, to someone else, “Get those girls! Cover them!”

The hard squeals and whimpers of terrified girls finally did it. “Get off!”

Jackson flew back with a crackling pop. He thudded into the ground.

Lena pulled herself up to her hands and knees, spitting dirt from her mouth.

She flipped herself onto her back and crab-walked backward, scanning the cliff ahead of her. All she needed was a direction. Bolts and arrows arced up toward the right. Motion, a flicker behind a pocket of scrub leaning out from the edge.

Her hand, reaching beside her to pull herself back, landed on soft flesh. She glanced down. A thin arm, unmoving beneath her hand, led her up to a slack jaw, staring hazel eyes, wisps of rich chestnut hair being lifted by the gentle breeze still blowing across them.
Lydie
. A little girl who might have been ten beneath the grime and thinness of her captivity.

Breath hitched in Lena’s throat. She turned back to the cliff and shrieked wordless rage up at the bastard on the cliff.

“Lena, no!”

The wave pulsing up and out from her slammed into the cliff below the scrub. The cliff side exploded with a roar of dust and flying rock. Lena curled into a ball over Lydie. The tiny sharp blows of pebbles on her back were brief, but the pattering of rocks sliding down the cliff went on longer.

It was quiet. Nearby, one of the girls made a frightened mewl. Quick footsteps responded. She lifted her head.

Rose leaned down and lifted Marissa into her arms, wiping the dirt from the terrified girl’s eyes.

The other girls stirred.

Behind her, a man’s rough voice asked, “Is he down?”

“He’s in pieces,” came the grim reply. The Neo-barb leader’s voice. Roddric? “How about us?”

Lena counted small heads. All of the girls were moving. All but one.

She lifted herself to her knees and ran her hands down Lydie’s small face to her chest, where bright red bloomed across the front of her shirt. She spread her shaking hands over Lydie’s wound, trying. With a frustrated cry, she shoved one hand up to the girl’s forehead, smearing bloody dust, searching.

She couldn’t spark if there was nothing there. Death had come too fast.

Lena leaned over the girl until their foreheads met, her voice thick. “I’m sorry. I told you you’d be safe, and you weren’t. I’m sorry.”

A hand landed on her back. She refused to move.

“Lena.” Mere seconds, and then the hand slid to her shoulder and pulled her up. “Lena, you can’t help her. You can’t. But you can help him.” Alex leaned in, shook her slightly. “Lena. Look.” He turned her.

One of Roddric’s men splayed flat on the ground, coughing blood. His wound gaped high on his chest, blood bubbling. The bullet had gone through him and continued its trajectory down from the cliff into Lydie.

“We don’t have much time. You need to help him now.”

She wiped her cheeks with both hands, smearing Lydie’s blood into the tears and dust.

Roddric and another man were crouched beside the wounded Neo-barb. Wary, they watched her approach.

She knelt beside the man. “What’s his name?” she asked Roddric.

“Trevor.”

She nodded and leaned in. “This won’t hurt, Trevor, but you’ll feel heat.” She barely recognized her own voice. She didn’t know if the man even heard her.

He stared up at the sky and blinked slowly. Each breath sounded heavy and wet.

She pressed one hand to his chest and wormed the other beneath him to find the entrance wound on his back. She pulled in a deep centering breath.

A sweet half-smile in a pale, thin face beneath red brown hair flashed into her mind. Lydie had tried to smile at her as she’d pulled the collar free.

Lena’s centering breath faltered and her eyes flooded. She gasped it back and drew in a second shaky breath.

She focused her will on the Dust within Trevor. It wouldn’t be fast. Blood filled his pierced lung. The Dust would have to work a tandem job of healing the flesh and removing the blood that would otherwise drown him. She kept it focused, ignoring the sounds of movement and voices around her.

Trevor’s chest rose then fell on a sharp, clear intake of breath. Her hand fell away from his chest. She struggled to free her other hand until Trevor felt her movements beneath his shoulder and rolled over. He sat up and ran one shaking hand up across the spot on his chest where there had been a hole moments before.

“Trev, can you stand?” Roddric asked the man, voice low. “Can you walk?”

Trevor nodded. “I think I could run.”

“Good.” Alex said grimly. He pulled Lena to her feet, his arms sliding around her, offering his strength.

• She gratefully took it. She leaned into him, pressing her face against his chest. After a long moment, she lifted her head to look around, her vision hazy. They all stared at her. Even Jackson.
  

“I’m sorry I zapped you.”

Jackson shook his head. “It’s okay. I guess I got off easy. That was a really big boom.” His attention swept along Alex’s arms around her, and his jaw tightened.

“We’ve got to go now.” Alex stepped away. He leaned over and picked up one of the smaller girls. “There’s a boat coming around that bend any minute, and there’s no way the prison didn’t hear the fight.”

Marissa was still tucked into Rose’s arms. Lena wandered back over to Lydie. Were they going to leave her? They were
not
going to leave her.

She squatted down and scooped up the smaller girl. The little girl’s limp body was heavy, but she managed to stand with her.

Alex sighed, the sound full of regret. “Lena, you can’t.”

“I can. I am.” She raised her chin and held tighter to Lydie.

Jackson stood back, but he shook his head. At Alex’s refusal, or at her desire to bring Lydie with them?