Splinter (The Machinists Book 2) (26 page)

Ren shot a pair of ice blasts, which took Darian the back of the legs, driving through his hamstrings and into his thighs. Letting out a strangled cry, Darian fell to his knees. But the flames did not stop. He raised his hands to the sky and screamed. The flames extended well beyond the pit, and even ten feet away, Ren had to shield her eyes from the heat.

She prepared another blast of ice.

The fire disappeared.

Darian collapsed. He kicked and thrashed, his arms and legs shaking violently. His chest arched toward the sky, and his head snapped back as a pained groan left his lips.

Jaxon reemerged, stopping a few paces in front of Darian. He dropped into a crouch, watching as the man died. He said something that Ren couldn’t hear. But she knew what she would have said.

“Magic has consequences.”

Allyn felt as though his heart were running away. It beat so fast, it hurt. And then every so often, it would trip up like a sprinter in the last leg of a race and crash to a dead stop. In those moments, a split second lasted an eternity, and Allyn feared his heart wouldn’t start back up again. Fortunately, so far, it had.

He heard a woman’s voice, distant and quiet, but the world took a backseat when he wasn’t sure if his heart was going to explode or not. Whoever she was, her presence soothed him.

He opened his eyes, expecting to see Kendyl or Nyla, but the room spun, and he felt as though he might pass out. He closed them again, but it was all he needed.

Leira knelt beside him, her cold hand pressed against his arm. Even through his eyelids, he could see the soft glow as she probed him.

“Arrhythmia,” she said.

“What’s that?” Liam asked.

“An irregular heartbeat.”

“Will he be okay?”

“Yes,” Leira said. “He’ll need rest, and he probably shouldn’t wield again until it returns to normal, but he should be fine.”

Allyn felt her withdraw her hand and move away.

“You hear that?” Nolan asked. “Quit milking it and get up.” He pulled Allyn into a sitting position.

Allyn opened his eyes. Gravity played games with him, pulling him one way, then the other, then backward. He swayed, fell, and caught himself, all just in time for it to shift again. “Give me a moment,” he said, his throat tight.

It was some time before he was able to get up, and even longer before he’d worked himself into a chair. He was sitting doubled over with his elbows on his knees, hands in his sweat-slick hair when Jaxon and Ren entered the library. Cuts, scrapes, bruises, and burns covered them from neck to foot, all partially hidden under layers of mud and ash. Their tired expressions were hardly the looks of victory.

“What happened?” Allyn asked.

“It’s over,” Jaxon said.

“Who won?”

Jaxon wore a haunted expression. “Nobody.”

A steady stream of magi appeared in the doorway behind him.

“Let’s load up and be done with it.”

Chapter 29

T
he McCollum Family took more than an hour to load the library’s contents into the cargo vans. The sun had risen high enough to top the tips of the evergreen trees, and a thick fog still hovered a few feet above the ground, thickest in the grassy areas that surrounded the fallen manor. It gave Jaxon the impression that he was walking on clouds.

Liam oversaw the work, valuing caution over speed and occasionally barking out orders when he was displeased, more to prove a point and reaffirm his desire to finish without further damage than because anyone did anything wrong.

Leira worked with Nyla and Vincent to set up a medical triage station. Brandt’s clerics, Galvin and Enova, joined them. All in all, there were four McCollum magi dead and three more injured, two of whom would likely suffer from lifelong disabilities. Jaxon had given the dead Hylands battlefield burials. So many fallen.

It’s not over yet,
Jaxon reminded himself.
There’s still one more.

Brandt kept his magi separated from the McCollum Family and gave Jaxon an apprehensive look as he approached. He broke away from the group to meet Jaxon before he reached them.

“I need to speak with them,” Jaxon said.

“Of course,” Brandt agreed, a slight quiver in his voice.

The Hyland magi watched him warily, some even with open contempt. Many had likely seen this as an opportunity to right previous wrongs and impose justice on their old Family. They weren’t content being ordered to the sidelines.

The person Jaxon was looking for stood near the back of the group, her face expressionless. Blond hair, frazzled by the damp air, framed her round face. She licked her red lips, showing no signs that she knew what was coming.

“I appreciate your patience as we’ve regained control of the situation,” Jaxon said. “It’s no doubt been a very difficult night for you.” He hoped his voice sounded kinder to them than it did to his own ears.

Most of the magi in front of him were good people who would have risked their lives to stop Darian if given the chance. But before he’d had an opportunity to speak with Liam, he hadn’t known whom he could trust. Even then, he had no way to be sure he’d rooted out the last of the spies. He prayed the movement had died with Darian, but as he’d seen when Darian had picked up Lukas’s mantle, there was never any way to know where it would truly end.

“We’re nearly finished,” Jaxon continued. “So if you’ll make your way to the vans, we’ll be moving shortly.”

The magi groaned and grumbled among themselves, but moved as a sheepish unit toward the vans parked around the perimeter of the manor.

Brandt remained behind with Jaxon, watching as they shuffled away.

“Did you find the mole?” Brandt asked quietly.

“Blond hair,” Jaxon said. “Bringing up the rear.”

“Roselie?” Brandt’s expression went from surprise to dismay then finally rested on cold anger. “And you’re just going to let her go?”

“No. But they’re not my family, and my hands are already stained with enough blood.”

Brant licked his lips nervously. “I assume you have proof?”

“It’ll be in her phone.”

Brandt’s face twitched as he struggled to bite back a scowl. He didn’t question why she had a phone. Unlike the McCollum Family, which had, at Graeme’s order, largely disavowed technology, the Hyland Family had embraced it. Each of Darian’s magi carried one.

“Roselie!” Brandt shouted.

The blond-haired girl stiffened.

“A minute,
please
.”

Roselie turned, and Jaxon and Brandt approached.

“I need to see your phone,” Brandt said.

“Of course,” Roselie said. Her eyes flickered to Jaxon then back to Brandt. “What are you looking for?”

Brandt handed the phone to Jaxon. “We fear there’s another mole among us. It wasn’t a coincidence that Darian was here tonight. Someone told him to be.”

Jaxon brought up the text messages and wasn’t surprised to see that it had been wiped clean. He scrolled through the recent calls. And again, there was nothing incriminating. He sighed. She wasn’t going to make it easy.

“And you think it was me?”

“Was it?” Brandt asked.

Roselie met Brandt’s eye. “I shouldn’t have to answer that.”

“You don’t have to,” Jaxon said. “You can delete messages, but data is never lost. And fortunately for me, there are some in my Family who know how to access that information.” He tapped the final button and brought up the cached data Liam had told him how to find. The message was short and simple. He held it up for Brandt to read.

They’re moving. McCollum Manor. Tonight.

Roselie’s lips parted as if she were going to say something, but nothing came out. Her face drained of color, and she swallowed.

Having been through enough desperate attacks recently, Jaxon was prepared for another. It never came. Instead, Roselie’s shoulders slumped, and her head drooped to stare at the ground.

“He had my son.” Her voice was almost a whisper. “He said… he said if I didn’t…” She closed her eyes and exhaled a long, resigned breath.

Brandt looked pained, caught somewhere between anger and empathy. They had each made great sacrifices to protect their children.

“How many more were feeding Darian information?” Jaxon asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “He never told us anything.”

“If I find out you’re lying or holding something back…” His implications were clear.

“I’m not,” she said hurriedly.

“How many remain at the Estate?”

“Not many,” Roselie said. “Only a handful.”

“All loyal to Darian?”

Roselie’s face curled with anger, and she looked up from the ground to meet Jaxon’s eye. “No. Very few remain loyal to that maniac. The rest of us are prisoners of fear and circumstance.”

Jaxon let his mind wander for a moment. The pieces in his head began clicking into place, but he wasn’t certain how to proceed.

“What are you thinking?” Brandt asked.

“I’m not sure yet,” Jaxon said honestly. “Bring her. If there’s any punishment, we can figure it out later. Right now, I want to be gone from this place.”

The motion of the car did little to help Allyn’s loss of equilibrium. He was thankful Kendyl had made sure he rode in the Cadillac—another bumping, swaying ride in the back of a cargo van might have thrown him over the edge. The car glided down the driveway, its air-ride suspension absorbing most of the ruts and potholes. The soft, worn-in leather seat felt like a feather pillow under him, caressing him like a mother’s touch. He didn’t feel
good
, but he certainly could have felt worse.

Quiet and concerned, Kendyl was riding in the back with him, completely oblivious to the small looks Nolan periodically shot her way from the front seat.

Jaxon turned off the driveway onto the old, two-lane mountain road, passing the stone pillars that had once held the steel gate that shielded the McCollum Family from the outside world. The stream of cargo vans followed, and Jaxon led them through the curvy pass, keeping his pace well below the speed limit. The wounded rode in one of those vans, packed in like the library contents, something else to be transported.

Allyn kept his eyes closed and his arm resting on the door, touching the cool, damp glass of the window. The rest of his body was burning, and he was covered in an uncomfortable sweat. Not the watery kind that followed an extraneous activity, this was the thick, sticky sweat that covered an ailing body. It was confining. And just thinking about it made Allyn’s skin crawl.

He focused on two things: the coolness of the window and the steady rhythm in his chest. Leira had been right. His heartbeat had returned to normal, and the pain had subsided with it. He still felt weak, and even sitting down, his body was weary. But his heart felt as strong as ever. That didn’t mean he didn’t pay close attention to it.

Preoccupied with his inner thoughts, he barely heard Jaxon’s curse. He was, however, greatly aware of the car’s sudden lurch and the squeal of its tires. Allyn’s eyes snapped open. A couple hundred feet in front of them, more than a dozen police vehicles blocked the their path to the highway. Squad cars and SUVs parked two deep formed a phalanx of metal and machine. Officers stood behind opened doors with their guns drawn. And at the head was a white Chevy Impala
.

Special Agent Richard Maddox waited two steps in front of his hood, well beyond the line of cover. His dark suit was sharp and pristine, his head clean shaven, and his thick beard carefully sculpted. A series of shallow cuts and light bruises covered one half of his face, no doubt from his encounter with Nolan, and he held his wrist in one hand, the gun in the other, its barrel pointed toward the ground.

The car squealed to a halt some thirty yards from Maddox. A cacophony of locking brakes and howling tires sang behind them, quickly followed by the horrific banging sounds of metal crashing into metal. Allyn stiffened, flinching every time the dull
crash
thundered through it all, anxious that they would be hit next.

It ended as quickly as it began. Blue smoke hung in the air like a toxic haze, and its acrid smell stung the back of Allyn’s throat. Shattered pebbles of glass littered the road, glittering under the morning sun like tiny diamonds. Allyn shook the cobwebs loose. Jaxon was as still as a mountain, his eyes wide, hard, and unblinking. He watched Maddox, his hands flexing on the steering wheel.

Maddox didn’t seem to notice. He was fixed on Nolan.

“Is everyone all right?” Allyn asked, never taking his eyes off the agent.

“Yeah,” they each said, in varying degrees of distress.

Allyn scanned the scene in front of them. The crescent shape of the police phalanx stretched from one shoulder of the road to the other, extending all the way to the guardrail. Behind Jaxon’s lead car, the McCollum Family’s cargo vans had come to a stop in a haphazard mess, blocking the road from ditch to ditch. They had nowhere to go. They were stuck.

“We’re not getting out of this one,” Allyn said.

The leather of the steering wheel creaked under Jaxon’s flexing hands, and Allyn thought he could hear his grinding teeth.

Allyn was so angry, he could feel the tears of frustration welling in the backs of his eyes. They’d been so close. But instead of getting away, the entire McCollum Family and the Hyland refugees who’d trusted them were going to be taken in. Everything had been undone because of Darian Hyland’s surprise attack. He was, for the first time, jealous that he hadn’t been the one to kill the psychopath.

“Allyn,” Kendyl said. “Allyn, look at me.”

He couldn’t do it. He was afraid she would throw him over the edge, that he would lose control of his swelling emotions. She grabbed him by the back of his head and pulled his forehead against hers. She looked at him from the tops of her eye sockets, her green
eyes radiating with intensity. It was a game they used to play—smashing their foreheads together and waiting for the other to wilt under the pain. Their mother used to say they were trying to find out who was more stubborn. Kendyl always won.

Allyn set his jaw against the pain and closed his eyes. He was still afraid to look at her. He’d failed her. Again.

“We can do this, Allyn.” Kendyl pressed harder. “I know we can. We’ve been through worse. I believe in you.”

The pain grew so intense that Allyn barely heard her, and just as he was about to cry out, she released. Allyn’s head drifted backward, the stars in his vision slowly disappearing as the pain and pressure subsided. Buried beneath it, a new feeling blossomed. A sense of hope. Optimism. Confidence. Worry disappeared under its weight like morning fog under the rising sun. He drew in a deep breath, coursing the positive energy through his veins until his entire body was alive with it. His vision grew sharper. The lines of worry in Jaxon’s face seemed crisper, and the silence of their standoff sounded deeper. He suddenly felt as though the odds were in their favor.

Kendyl blinked, her eyelids drooping slowly, and shook her head, rubbing her temples, likely trying to shake away her own stars. When she looked at Allyn, her face was expressionless. His strong, confident sister had become a quiet, placid woman who looked as though she were on the verge of passing out.

“Kendyl…” Allyn said.

“I’m fine,” Kendyl said. Her voice was soft and slightly confused.

“Are you with me?”

“Always.”

Allyn unbuckled his seatbelt and popped open the door. Only then did Jaxon snap out of his stupor. He wheeled on Allyn, reaching for him.

“What are you doing?” he demanded.

Only a short time ago, Allyn would have wilted under such intensity, but now he was swimming with confidence. He met Jaxon’s eye. “They’re after me.”

“Not anymore,” Jaxon said. “They’ll have us all now.”

“I know,” Allyn said. “But I have to talk to him.”

“You’re turning yourself in?”

“Not if I can help it.”

Jaxon’s expression softened. He looked at Agent Maddox then back at Allyn, no doubt coming to the same conclusion Allyn had. He gave Allyn a slight nod and pulled his arm back.

“It’s been a ride.” The words slipped out, coming from the deep recesses of Allyn’s memory. They weren’t his mother’s final words but were near enough. Allyn smiled, more at the memory than anything else, but the corner of Jaxon’s mouth arched into a grin.

Allyn stepped out of the car, and an immediate wave of clicks met him as the officers switched off safeties and chambered bullets. Allyn had never felt so alone. He’d been targeted, hunted, and attacked, but through it all, he’d had the help and support of people who cared about him. They had gone through it together. But as he took a series of uneasy steps toward the front of the car, he had to face down more than twenty black barrels, each holding a round with his name on it. If someone had a twitchy finger or had grown weary of chasing him, it would be all over.