Summer Ruins (41 page)

“They killed her. Leah. Zakej killed Leah. She’s dead. Leah’s dead.”

“What about Pax?” Lucas shakes my shoulders, forcing me to snap out of the spiral of panic twirling through me like a tornado. “Is Pax okay?”

I laugh, realizing somewhere inside me that the reaction is insane, and it settles quickly into a sob. “No, I doubt it. He saw the whole thing. He couldn’t stop it.”

The thought pulls me to my feet, banishing my grief to a place I can return to later, if there’s time. “Lucas, he couldn’t stop it. He’s going to lose his mind. He’ll get himself killed if we don’t help him.”

I grab the last bag of weapons and fly down the stairs, Lucas hot on my heels. Scalding tears fall down my cheeks. My heart is gone. Leah. After everything she’s been through, all she’s done for us, she can’t be gone.

My lungs and legs burn by the time we reach the melee of the Summer Celebration. Panicked veiled humans, unsure how to react to the scuffles breaking out around them, bang into one another in an attempt to move to the edges. Pax has stirred up a massive windstorm, and the red-and-white tents rip free from their tethers, bouncing and smacking into other tents, into helpless people.

More debris flies through the air, turning food and games into dangerous projectiles, and a sugary pastry smacks me hard in the cheek before we get two steps in. Lucas and I don’t need swords, but as we spot our friends, we dole out weapons. None of them ask questions, not that we could hear them, anyway. It’s a complete disaster zone, and we pass more than one trampled human in our struggle to the middle.

Wardens with shiny black acid shooters march in from the rear, where they’ve left the riders. I see Laura and short, stocky Ben fighting a group of white-clad Others with their bare hands, managing to get a punch in here and there but taking more than a few in return. Ryan’s under two Wardens who are beating him senseless, his glasses broken and the shards drawing blood from his cheeks. I light his attackers on fire with a quick flick of the wrist. Lucas helps him up and then hands over the duffel bag.

“Go, help! Get them weapons, if you can!” I shout over the howling wind.

He nods and disappears, and a moment later the windstorm dies. It’s so sudden that objects stop in midair and drop like rain, slamming into people and into the ground around us.

A sob tears from my throat. “He’s dead. Pax is dead.”

“No. No, Althea. Look.” Lucas yanks my arm, forcing me to see what’s going on. “Deshi has him.”

It’s true. Deshi has tackled Pax next to the giant rusted wheel. By the time we get to them, the fight seems to have bled out of Pax. Anger and pain twist his features as he fights the guilt he’s always had a harder time handling than the rest of us.

Three booming rounds of shots ring out, followed by the splats that can only be the impact of acid slugs. None of them hit me, or any of the four of us, but they must have hit something. Around us, our friends and the Wardens are struggling. Zakej and the Prime are nowhere to be seen, and I’m guessing Pax sent Zakej flying as soon as Leah dropped from his hands. I don’t see her body and for that, I’m glad.

We have to do something, but if I’ve learned anything these past several months, it’s that our abilities can only get us so far. We need help. “Pax, get up.”

He doesn’t respond, even though Deshi moves off of him. I reach down and grab one of his hands, and Deshi takes the other. We haul him to his feet, and I push my face in front of his until he can’t ignore me. “Pax. Snap out of it. I want to lose it, too. Leah deserves screaming and tears and…” I choke on water, swallow hard. “More than we can give her right now. But if we don’t do something, everyone else is going to die, too.”

I slide my hand into his and yank Lucas to my other side. Deshi takes Lucas’s opposite hand, and then they all wait expectantly for me to tell them what I have in mind.

“Give me as much power as you’ve got.”

They oblige without asking any more questions. I gather short, coherent sentences in my mind, then push them at the masses of humanity standing still in the middle of the battle, undisturbed by the fact that Others are beating and killing teenagers, that slugs made of acid are eating away their skin.

The Others are the enemy. Forget what they’ve told you. Remember how things used to be. Fight them. Fight them now, or we’re all going to die
.

There’s so much power flowing through me with the four of us connected that it’s difficult to harness, and the veiled people react immediately. At first they have trouble shaking the confusion. But then it’s like watching hundreds of people awaken from a dream—straight into a nightmare—and the majority of them move sluggishly to assist in the battle.

Some sit in the muddy grass, looking around helplessly. A few run away.

But many of them stay and fight.

It seems the Spritans were right all along. The power it took to unveil them all at once, and to have it mostly work, surged at an incalculably higher potency than it did with me alone.

“Okay, now what?” Lucas asks impatiently. “Do we jump in?”

I shake my head the same time as Pax says, “No.”

“No,” I echo. “Unless we get the Prime and Zakej, we can’t beat them this way. They’ll just keep healing and coming back.”

“Althea!” A shriek rips through the morning, terrified and panicked.

We all turn toward the sound. On the other side of the metal wheel, Greer’s head sticks through a jittery portal. As we stare, her head disappears, but her hands grasp the edges, proving their portals are more corporeal than I ever suspected. Her knuckles whiten, purple fingernails digging into the soap-bubble substance, and then they disappear.

Someone pulled her from the inside.

Lucas is gone, stepping through the open doorway to the Harvest Site before I can yell out, so instead I dive after him, Deshi and Pax on my heels.

On the other side of the portal we find the Prime family in the Harvest Site extraction tent. Zakej has hold of Griffin, and Kendaja has her spindly arms wrapped around Greer’s ankles. Greer is splayed on the floor, struggling against the girl’s inhuman grasp.

When they see us, everyone stops moving, and the Prime steps forward. “What did you do to the Wardens here?”

Despite the raging battle, still audible through the open portal, his voice remains calm. Lazy, even. When none of us answer he flicks a finger toward Zakej, who lifts his hands to the sides of Griffin’s head the way he did with Leah before he killed her.

“No,” Greer gasps from the floor, leaking tears from eyes so angry I think they might be able to kill these Others without any help.

“We poisoned them, but they’re not dead,” I say quickly, anything to save Griffin in this moment. We’ve lost Leah, and after Nat, I don’t know if Greer can handle losing her brother, too.

Griffin’s dark purple eyes are calm, searching mine and trying to convey a message I don’t understand. But in the next instant he starts to shift his shape, shrinking out of Zakej’s grasp until he’s on the floor, a yellow mouse scrabbling out the door. Kendaja lets go of Greer with a squeal, giving chase, and the Prime and Zakej race after her.

I help Greer up and the four of us run out of the tent. Griffin leads Kendaja on a merry chase over the ice toward the Prime family’s tent, but instead of going after him like I expect, Greer turns the opposite direction, toward Station One.

“Where are you going?” I pant, trying to keep up and keep myself from freezing to death at the same time.

“Helping you win,” she growls.

She stops in the middle of nowhere, icy tundra stretching out forever, Station One visible in the distance. She squats down, yanking open a hatch in the ice. I recognize it as the same one I shoved Jas out of weeks ago to help her breathe.

Inside waits several scared but determined faces. The woman at the top squints up into the sudden dim light, her dirt-streaked face barely visible. “Is it time to go take it to these bastards, or what?”

Chapter 39.

Greer sticks her hand down and the woman grabs hold. “Get up here.”

Once the people start coming, they don’t stop. Tommy and Jas climb out after the first lady, and I grab them both into a hug before passing Tommy to Pax. Tears run down Pax’s face, and I know they’re for Leah as much as the joy at the moment. Watching his reunion with Tommy almost makes all of this worth it.

Deshi and I lead them back to the portal and help them through, warning them what they’ll find at the Summer Celebration and what to try to avoid. I grab Tommy by the shoulder when he reaches the front, stopping him. “You and Jas don’t fight, Tommy. You got it? You’re in charge of her. There’s a building behind a black tent that has a big white woman made out of rock lying in front of it. Take Jas there and hide, okay?”

He nods, and I reluctantly let the two of them through.

It’s ten minutes later, and the end of the line is barely in sight, when Griffin the rodent scampers back into view.

“Greer!” I shout, noticing an ear is missing and blood rushes from a deep gash in his mouse flank.

Kendaja appears, lightning quick, and pounces. Griffin struggles for a moment between her gleeful fingers, then gives up and morphs back into his Sidhe form.

The Prime and Zakej are nowhere in sight.

Griffin’s eyes meet mine, full of pain but steely determination. “They’re trapped, for now, in an elevator shaft. I can’t hold her for long—” He breaks off, hissing through his teeth, and my eyes drop to find Kendaja’s deadly fingertips sinking into his sliced-open side.

Purple blood gushes out like a waterfall, soaking his sickly pale skin and coating her arms up to the elbow. Greer stops in her tracks, as unsure what to do as I am. If we try to attack Kendaja, it could only make her kill him faster.

Lucas and Pax enter the tent with the rear of the line, scooting quickly to the front while assessing the situation with Griffin.

I can’t take my eyes off Greer as she searches her brother’s face. She sees something there that I don’t and breaks down in a sob. When his eyes shift to me, I recognize his intention. Sacrifice.

Not something I ever expected to see in his face, but it’s there.

“Get her out of here, Althea. Close the portal.”

“No.” Greer sobs. “I’m not leaving you. You never left me.”

“Exactly. I should have left you—” He cries out as Kendaja’s hand slips into his abdomen up to the wrist.

She pants excitedly at the display of pain, leaning forward to breathe in the scent of fear and agony that even I can smell. The last of the humans disappear through the portal, their faces pale and sweaty.

I turn briefly toward the boys. “Go. I’ll bring Greer. Just… give her a minute.”

“I should have… left you before, stubborn girl. You stubborn… stupid…” He’s gasping, trying to stay awake as his eyes roll back in his head.

I take Greer’s hand, but she won’t move. I’m not leaving her here, though, and take her by surprise when I yank her toward me. It tips her off balance, but I’m ready for her weight. When it hits me I spin, using the movement to leverage her through the portal.

The Prime and Zakej burst into the tent, covered in dirt and dust, and I duck through the shimmering hole. Greer’s in a heap on the Summer Celebration grass and concrete. “Lucas! Help me pick her up.”

We haul her to her feet, and while he holds her steady, I pick up her hands and guide them to the edges of the portal, shoving it closed a second before Zakej’s arm can snake through and grasp her neck.

The last thing Greer and I see is Kendaja pressing her lips to Griffin’s.

I drop Greer’s hands and wheel around. My brain continues to force my body to function, even though inside I feel numb from everything we’ve seen today. The Prime and Zakej are out of the fight for now, but I know it won’t be long before they summon a Goblert or another mode of transportation and get back here to command their Others.

The scene here has worsened, the ground littered with bodies covered with slugs or simply bloodied. Some people are tied up, and more than one of the unmoving injured are dressed as Wardens or Refreshers, but it’s not enough.

The Others will eventually get up; the humans will not.

I look at Greer, staring into the air where her brother’s face was a moment before, reminding me more of the catatonic girl she was when I trapped her in her mind than the angry girl ready for a fight I’d found in Ireland weeks ago.

And that’s when it hits me. How to beat them.

“We have to go into the hive. If we can find the Prime and his family’s sinums, we can trap them there. The way we did with Greer last spring.”

“How are we going to find them? It could take weeks,” Pax argues.

He might be right, but I suspect his hesitance has more to do with wanting to physically avenge Leah—and everyone else—than my plan not being the best we’ve got.

“I’ll show you,” Greer croaks, her voice raw and dripping grief. “I know where they are.”

“So do I,” Deshi bites out. His mouth and eyes are pinched as though he’s in pain. It must be hard for him, to witness what Zakej is capable of, but it’s better he see.