The Cure (10 page)

Jace was staring at his phone. “Still no answer at the palace, but you’ve got the right place for the safe house. It’s coming up quick.”

Right. The information was also on our phones. Must be the pain that made me forget.

“You guys jump out,” Keene said. “I’ll keep going. Lead them away.” Determination radiated from him—and worry. Why wasn’t he blocking his emotions? He’d been in enough tough situations that it couldn’t simply be because he was distracted. Which meant he was allowing me to sense them. Was it so I’d trust him?

He glanced over at me, his hair curling out at the ends beneath his knit cap and his green eyes intense. Something warm ran between us. It felt a lot like trust.

“No, I’ll do it.” Jace said. “I’ll dump the car and get away on foot. I’m familiar with this area—you’re not.” His eyes switched to me. “I’ll meet you five blocks south at that tobacco shop. You know the one.”

Keene’s eyes asked a question, and I nodded. “He’ll easily outrun them on foot.”

Without waiting for more, Jace climbed between the two front seats, shoving Keene against the door. “Now,” he said, grabbing the wheel. “I’ll brake just around that turn. I won’t be stopping, though.”

There was nothing for it but to open the doors and wait for the brakes to screech. I caught a glimpse of Keene clinging to the driver’s side door, just as I clung to mine. My ankle wasn’t healed yet, though the bleeding had slowed to almost nothing. I had to plan my fall well, or I wouldn’t get out of the way before the police car arrived. Any more delays could mean the difference between life and death at the palace.

The car slowed and I launched from the vehicle with my good ankle, tucking and rolling as I hit the pavement. Bruises healed a lot faster than broken bones, and rolling helped limit breakage. For an instant, I caught sight of Jace’s worried face turned in my direction, but thoughts of him fled as pain from my ankle forced me to bite back a scream. Jace hurtled ahead, the engine roaring. I was up and hopping the few remaining steps to the row of parked cars before Keene recovered from his own fall and joined me. We dived behind a battered black truck half a second before the police car screeched around the corner.

Pressed together on the freezing ground beside the truck, we waited, tensing for the sound of brakes. But the police car passed and the siren began fading.

Keene watched me, our faces inches apart. His emotions had suddenly gone dark. My heart thumped crazily, but I told myself it was the danger and our success. There was no time for anything else.

“Come on.” I used the truck to help me rise.

“Can you walk?”

“I think so, but it’s still not ready.” Ready for a fight, I meant.

He nodded and put an arm around me. “Where to?”

“It’s that green car over there.”

“That piece of junk?”

“Hey, everyone leaves it alone. Key is somewhere near the back passenger side wheel in a magnet box. I’ll need the first aid kit in the back of the trunk. You drive. I’ll give you directions to the tobacco shop.”

I limped over to the car, leaning heavily on Keene. The vehicle might look like a rattletrap, but it had a new, powerful engine and a full tank of gas. After opening my door, Keene went to the trunk for the first aid kit. He handed it to me before sliding into his seat and pulling from the curb.

I guided Keene through the streets, my thoughts colliding wildly in my head. Were Ava and the others okay? I hadn’t even seen Kathy today. The slight twelve-year-old looked more and more like her mother every day, and sometimes that hurt more than I believed possible.

“There. Straight ahead.”

Keene squinted at the night. “I don’t see him.”

“Give him a moment.”

The brightness of my brother’s mind told me he was close. Even so, when Jace stepped from the shadows, I gave an internal sigh of relief.

Keene opened his door. “You drive,” he told Jace, sliding over on the long seat. He grabbed a roll of gauze from my hand. “Let me do that.”

My brother drove wildly through the streets of Portland. I knew I should tell him to go slower so we wouldn’t attract more police, but I wanted to get there every bit as fast as he did.

With sure and surprisingly gentle hands, Keene bandaged my ankle in the now-crowded front seat, using a splint on the outside for additional support. He knew as well as I did that any show of weakness during a battle with the Emporium Unbounded could mean death. “That won’t be comfortable,” he said, tapping the splint. “But it’ll give you extra stability until the ligaments heal the rest of the way.”

Already I felt much better. I reached out, absorbing, gaining strength. I would need it. We all would. I shoved an energy bar from the first aid kit at Keene. “Eat this.”

He tore off the wrapper. “How far?”

Jace was the one who replied. “Almost there.”

Minutes later, Jace turned onto the road leading to the palace. “I’ll dump the car at the bread factory.”

I nodded. Not close enough to alert any lookouts the Emporium might have, but it would take less than two minutes to steal across the space between the two buildings.

Seconds later, Jace jumped out and opened the back door, dislodging the seat cushion to reveal two assault rifles, several handguns and various magazines.

“Nice,” Keene took a rifle for himself.

“Just don’t shoot any of ours,” I told him. I’d never trained on the rifles myself. Neither had Jace, but that didn’t stop him from taking the other one. I popped a fresh magazine into my Sig and took a couple extra.

I held my own as we slunk through the darkness toward the old hotel, though I favored my ankle instinctively. Were we in time? I didn’t fool myself that we’d been the only target. The Emporium had perfected their attack methods over millennia.

Lights burned inside the palace, but there was no sound or movement. A Land Cruiser that hadn’t been there before sat in the gravel lot—probably Ritter’s—and the trailer that Ava had sent for the Hunters. Keene motioned to it, and we followed him there.

“No sign of them,” Keene said, his back against the trailer.

Tentatively, I reached out my mind. Doing so might alert the Emporium to our presence if they had a strong sensing Unbounded with them, but it was a risk I had to take, even though I wasn’t strong enough this far away to reach any of them except Ava.

All at once I felt her. Faintly and distorted. Like looking down the wrong end of a pair of binoculars. Red filled my vision. Blood.
We’re here,
I told her. The connection broke, and I sagged against the trailer, my head throbbing.

“You okay?” Jace grabbed my shoulder.

“It’s bad in there.” Fighting weakness in my knees, I breathed in deeply, absorbing from the air, rich with moisture from the nearby river. “Be careful. There’s at least one person standing guard on the right side of the palace. Must be watching the door.”

Jace edged around the back of the trailer. “Why is this unlocked? Cover me while I check it out.” He darted around the back, pulled open one of the trailer’s doors, and jumped inside. Less than thirty seconds later, he jumped down. “Ah, crap.” Leaning over, he vomited on the ground.

Keene and I hurried to peer inside. Dimly lit by the single streetlight, the limp bodies of the Hunters sprawled inside, each with a gaping cut across their throats. Mari’s dead husband stared back at us, his eyes wide with horror. My stomach churned, but I didn’t follow Jace’s example.

“The Emporium’s here, all right,” Keene said grimly, gazing at the palace. “Bars on the windows. How do we get in? If your people are holed up in one of those rooms, they don’t have long.”

Jace wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “The doors.” His eyes when they met mine were troubled, but there was no shielding my little brother from this. He was Unbounded and both blood and death were a part of our future.

I nodded. “That’s right. I vote for a direct assault.” Ritter might have been able to come up with something else, but he wasn’t here and Jace was too inexperienced. We had only Keene, once our enemy, to guide us.

“Let’s go, then.” Keene started across the gravel, ducking behind the next car.

“You go,” Jace told me. “I’ll cover you.”

I followed Keene, not even limping now. A silenced bullet whizzed past me, and less than a heartbeat later, Jace fired two shots. A man staggered from the shadows at the far end of the house. “Mortal,” I called as he fell. That meant he was probably down to stay.

The front door was ajar and Keene kicked it opened.

From the back of the house we heard a crash and the piercing scream of a child.

S
PENCER!
T
HOUGH IT COULD JUST
as easily be Kathy’s scream.

Two men emerged from corners of the lobby.
Unbounded.
I didn’t have time to shout a warning before Keene began firing, diving for the cover of the front desk. Everything exploded into sound and movement. Jace at the door, running so fast he was a blur. A window shattering, the chandelier swinging wildly. Two more men and a woman leaping down the stairs. Two mortals, one Unbounded. There had to be more in the hotel or Ava and the others would have appeared by now.

With so many of them, we didn’t stand much of a chance. Leaving Jace and Keene to deal with the newcomers, I headed toward the conference room where I thought I’d heard the scream. It was empty, but huge holes in the conference table and Stella’s wrecked computers showed I was on the right trail. A small potted plant that normally sat in the middle of the table, lay tipped on its side, dirt scattered everywhere. For two months I’d watered the stupid thing—only to have it end up like this. It seemed to embody everything the Emporium stood for.

I sprinted to the other side of the room, fear choking me. The plant could be saved or replaced, but not the children. I had to hurry. Out the far door and down another hall I went, checking doors along the way—closets, office, weapons pantry. I found nothing but bullet holes, blood, and the occasional body. Not ours. At least not yet.

A subdued life force signaled the presence of someone behind me, someone who was shielding. I turned, pulling the trigger on my Sig, but the man was already diving to the side, anticipating my move. The bullet dug into the wall. “Stop! It’s me.”

I hesitated. “Ritter?”

“Yep. Try not to shoot at me again, okay? At least not tonight.” His voice was casual but his emotions flared, breaking through his control: relief at seeing me, anger, desire for revenge. A cut marred the brow above his left eye and the skin of his cheek below it, as though someone had sliced him with a knife. Red stained his blue T-shirt and a blood-saturated rag circled one of his biceps. It was all I could do not to throw myself at him to make sure he was really okay.

Another scream shattered my relief at seeing him alive. This time I was sure it came from Spencer.

“Where are the kids?” I barked.

“They were with Stella and Oliver in the gym.” He motioned in the direction I’d been heading. “Ava and I were in the upstairs sitting room. We had a dozen Emporium agents break in there. I just now got free. Ava’s gone to help Jace.”

I started forward, with Ritter following close behind. Had Stella and the kids been able to hide? No. Something had made Spencer scream. I looked back at Ritter. “What about Mari?”

“She was with us, but she—” He broke off, his brow gathering. “She . . . disappeared.”

Disappeared? There was no time to pursue that further. We’d reached the double doors of the gym. One was shut, but the other lay askew on its hinges. We could hear fighting inside.

Without hesitation, Ritter slipped through the door first, his black eyes glittering dangerously, although he carried no weapons that I could see. I hurried after him. In the middle of the gym Stella battled two Unbounded women with a bo staff. Guns littered the floor and all the women bled from various wounds. A short distance behind Stella, two Unbounded men sprawled on the ground, riddled with bullets. One moved slightly even as I caught sight of him. Oliver lay between the two men, his face deathly pale. He pushed to a seated position, his blood-drenched chest convulsing with the effort.

But where were the children?

A bark directed my attention to a table next to the small fridge we’d installed in the corner. The kids huddled under this, Kathy with her arms around Spencer, shielding him with her body. Max stood in front of them, growling deep in his throat, his feet apart and eyes blazing.

A mortal near them was shoving a new magazine into his pistol.
Kill the damn mutt.
The thought came to me as clearly as if he’d spoken.

I launched toward the man as Stella fell with a cry. One of her opponents jumped on her, pushing a staff against her throat, the small mound of Stella’s baby between them.
No!
While Stella wouldn’t die from being choked, she would lose consciousness and any extended lack of air would kill her child, if the fight already hadn’t done irrevocable damage.

Ritter was already halfway to her. No chance for me to fire now without hitting one of them. The other Unbounded woman raced toward Oliver, who’d regained his feet. He brought up an escrima stick to defend himself, but his apparent weakness and her solid bulk promised a short fight. I’d help him—after I saved the children.