When Copper Suns Fall (33 page)

“This really isn’t a personal thing,” he
said.

I’d learned a lot about Caducean bonding from
Faris, so I understood what Seth was doing. My head clouded. His
slippery fingers probed my memories, erasing the bond with my
Protector, searching for a way to break through the block in my
mind.

You can’t betray Faris. Think.

I thought of Micah and me running hand in
hand through a field of lavender and phlox, but Seth’s penetration
was strong. My head pounded from the clash between his probe and my
wall protecting the Memories. Waves of pain soared through me.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I tried to break Seth’s hold. If I could
just block his face from my sight, I’d be okay.

In the next memory, I was back on Batts
Grave, reliving the touch of Faris’s lips on mine, and then we were
at the volcano in the Ruins, his hands steadying me, just before he
saved me from poison in the outcast dart.

At once, a new memory came to me, whispering
ancient words of the original seraphim. It was Leezra’s spell she
used to force the angel of darkness out of her dreams. Willing my
mind to focus, I opened my eyes and said, “Degredi Fons Muto.”Right
away, my head cleared, breaking Seth’s imprint. He cried out,
dropped to his knees, and covered his eyes.

“You bring new life to the term ‘on your
knees’, Seth.” Camden laughed like a hyena.

Seth stood, scoffing in Camden’s direction as
he groped the air. “She blinded me.”

“Impressive. But not very nice,” Camden said
to me.

“Want to compare mean girl bags? Then top
this.” Ashli held up her hands and rushed toward me. I caught her
wrists. Her strange magic was a warm current flowing from her hands
and into my palms. Something hot pushed back from inside me. With a
frown, she held my gaze, fighting my core power.

A memory of a little girl running from a
strange black beast flashed before me. The girl was a young Ashli,
and the beast was similar to the one inside Faris. The girl
screamed, fear rushing from her into me. The memory faded. Ashli
cupped her throat and dropped to her knees. Warm currents from her
memory flowed over my skin, touching me with a strange
calmness.

“You might consider a mind barrier made of
steel next time,” Seth said. He was still blinking but also managed
to smile. For an insane moment, I wanted to giggle, too; and not a
real laugh to show how funny I thought he was. But it would be a
crazy girl’s laugh because I’d probably be insane after all of
this.

The electricity from Ashli’s memory continued
to pass through me, striking the projector and compureader and all
things mechanical. Weeks ago I would’ve been terrified. But now,
love for my family and friends and even the people in the crate
fueled my courage. I was no longer afraid of the possibilities
facing me.

Felzar squawked and flapped his wide wings.
Even the monster bird knew when it was time to bail. They all
scampered toward the door, as the familiar rush of exhaustion
showered over me.

“Contain her,” Camden said to Seth who stole
a blinking glance in my direction just before he closed the iron
door to my room.

Camden’s face appeared through the barred
window. “I leave you to your memories. Maybe that feistiness will
ease up before the second group of meta-sharks gets hungry. Well,
oh dear, I believe they’re waiting as we speak.” He shut the flap,
his hyena laugh echoing in the hallway.

Outside my window, screams meshed together. I
ran to it, and scanned the scene. Seth was stalking toward the sand
dune beside the shark pit where Hagan stood. After a moment, he
stopped walking and glanced back at my window, beaming his angelic
smile, this Tainted who was part Caducean. Most of all, I wanted to
kick myself for believing Seth Alton was a good guy. I’d even
sealed my gullibility with a kiss like an idiot.

“Seth, don’t do it,” I screamed at the
window. “Lexa!”

I tried to connect with Faris again. A hard,
cold emptiness was my response. How would he find me inside a
mountain surrounded by waterfalls? I’d screwed up. I should’ve
fought Seth when he tried to take me away from the mall. Instead, I
was blinded by anger, doing exactly what the Tainted wanted me to
do. I was nothing more than a puppet like Camden said.

Sliding to the floor, I was ready to give
up. Lexa and Lucia’s cries filled my ears. Out of tricks, out of
energy, I let my head fall between my knees.

Are you just going to sit here and die with
her? Get on your feet!

At once a boy’s war cry filled the area
outside, drowning out the screams. Black lines crept up my right
arm and brightened to a silver pattern, shining like the angel who
gave them to me.

Chapter Twenty Six – Titanic Wraith

The lines stopped just below my right ear. A
renewed energy rushed through me. I felt as if a puppeteer had
pulled me to my feet.

I stood, closed my eyes. Micah’s face didn’t
appear, but I was almost certain I could do this thing even though
it hadn’t. I’d figured out what Leezra felt when she lost her
friend Anriel, because I’d experienced it my whole life, a longing
and pain. But in my heart, my mother—terrible choices she might
have made included—lived on. Even Bess and Audrina stirred a bit of
something in there, too.

My brother needed me to fight for him. Camden
and the Tainted couldn’t take something that didn’t belong to them,
and wouldn’t know what to do with it even if they did. Their
failure to turn me away from the Grace’s light had nothing to do
with the wall inside my head. It had everything to do with
understanding the power that fueled it, the same feeling tying me
to the Beast.

Even though I knew what I faced might break
my heart in the end.

Love was the power in the Grace.

My wings unfolded and lifted behind me,
flapping, filling the room with the familiar honeysuckle fragrance.
It didn’t matter that the top wing set had been damaged, because
directly below them another set emerged. I was a four-winged wonder
like the seraphim I’d seen on the Maze at the library. I focused on
the walls before me, pushing at them by using the energy in my
mind.

At once, the stone exploded.

I surged forward, flying over crumbling rock,
soaring over the revenant army below me, straight toward the cage
hanging from the crane dangling my friends over the meta-sharks. I
landed on top with a thud. Kids in the cage gasped, and from on the
ground below me, all gazes moved to where I stood on top.

“No more of my friends for you today,” I said
to the meta-sharks snapping their metal jaws.

Beside the cage, Seth and Ashli focused on
me. Smiling like an insane person, Seth held up a silver box, his
thumb poised over one of its red buttons. He pressed it. The doors
under my friends groaned, opening only an inch or two, so no one
fell out. His face showed more pleasure than any I’d ever seen on
it after he kissed Bell Girl.

Each door under the cage was operated by a
mini pulley connected to two main chains linked together on top. I
grabbed the two chains and pulled them tight, jamming the pulleys
underneath each person’s section.

And then they emerged from in the shadows
covering the tall grasses scattered along either side of the fort:
Faris, Desi, Tobie, Dugan, Flint, and many other fledglings. The
Caduceans had found me. Although I didn’t see him, I knew Jalen was
with them. But I needed them to move fast. The chains I held
slipped between my hands, one link at a time. Although my right
hand had been injured, I didn’t feel any pain. Did Camden’s ale
give me this strength? Or maybe it was the Grace.

Winds howled in a grim welcome, bringing
mildew odors with it. The fledgling’s war cries sailed across
Oceania’s winds, fueling my belief that the Caduceans could sway
the odds. That was until Ashli raised her hands with the rusted
bells attached to them. She clapped them together. The familiar
gong-like noise echoed over the shores. But the pain I’d felt that
first night at the Cradleshack didn’t happen this time.

Something else happened, instead.

The Tainted’s revenant army stomped into full
view, forming a line across the walkway leading up to the sand dune
where Seth, Ashli, and Hagan stood. There was at least one hundred
or more. Minus their dark glasses and with skin highlighted by the
lights around the fort, I finally understood why they hid behind
dark glasses. Jagged slits for eyes were etched onto pale faces as
if someone had both surprised and angered them. Their mouths were a
thin layer of skin sealing the lips together. I wasn’t really sure
if they had lips anymore.

Camden said they had nearly perfected the
formula for turning people over time. And the Tainted didn’t pick
just any old Gil or Rena from the street, either. The sacrifices
had to be younger than twenty-three years old to make the compound
work.

Seth raised his left arm, aiming whatever
nastiness he planned right toward me. I struggled to hold the
chains jamming the pulley system. Ashli stepped forward, raised her
hands, and shook the bells again. This time, they sounded weak like
glass wind chimes, and then they got louder and stronger, tickling
my eardrums. But I couldn’t let go of the cage.

The revenants made one collective turn toward
the Caduceans. Both Desi and Tobie shoved something similar to
white ear buds into their ears.

“What are you doing, Chela?” Faris said in my
mind.

“I’m saving my friends. So hurry up and do
whatever it is you’re planning to do,” I said, excited to hear his
voice in my head, and glad Ashli’s bells weren’t hurting me.

“But you hate me, right?” Faris asked.

“I could never hate you. This thing you’re
seeing, the person I’ve become, they’re all because of you,” I
said, feeling relieved to tell him how I felt.

“That’s all I needed to hear,” he said,
lifting his staff with the spinning top.

Over my head, a section of the chain attached
to the main pulley snapped, tilting the cage. I tumbled to the
side, still holding the chains binding the latches on the doors,
but feeling the pressure of holding myself and six other kids up
with a damaged wing. Below my feet, meta-sharks clanked and snapped
their metal teeth.

“Chela!” Faris called out to me.

“Hurry up, Faris,” I yelled.

I shuffled back to the top of the cage,
struggling with using my wings for leverage. As I worked to tighten
the chain controlling the latches underneath each person in the
cage, a spattering, gut-like noise came from the ragged lips of
Seth’s revenant army. The dead carcass scent increased to gagging
levels. Faris and his crew crouched into attack stance.

What must the families of the revenants be
thinking about their disappearances? Parents and sisters and
brothers had probably been ripped apart by their deaths, the same
way Micah’s absence tore into me. The thought fueled my focus,
giving me the strength to hold on to a cage large enough to crush
me.

“Chela, is that you?” Lexa said from inside
the cage under me.

“Yeah, it’s me. Don’t worry, I’ll get you
out, I think.”

“If you don’t get me out of here, my father
will have you arrested and thrown into the Barrows,” Diranna said
in a high-pitched shriek. Terrified was something different for
her. It even lowered her annoyance factor a bit. “Did you hear me,
Chela Prizeon? Get me out of here!”

“If you don’t shut up, I’m going to let go of
the chain holding your latch up,” I said, even though I was
bluffing.

On the ground below, Faris charged forward,
staff poised over his head like a warrior. “The first three is on
me,” he called out to the other Caduceans trailing him. Several
other war cries sounded from in the shadows under the waterfalls
and around the trees. Even the forest behind the Tainted’s fort
sprung to life with battle sounds. Revenants hissed, trudged
forward, and the two groups collided.

The first one to attack Faris was slow and
clumsy, raising its hands. Faris rolled by it, stood, whirled
around, and brought the creature down with one strike to the head.
The defeated revenant hissed, gurgled, spit out blue bile. Behind
Faris, another one pummeled his shoulders, knocking him off
balance. He dropped to his knees. My heart flipped; but Faris
jumped up before I even blinked.

Across the field from where Faris stood, Desi
knifed and shocked soldiers with her mirrors. Tobie’s flaming
arrows set them on fire like walking torches. The revenants put
down by the Caducean’s weapons gurgled just before they dropped to
the ground. Grime, thick like the liquid of a nightmare, oozed from
inside their wounds and mouths. More revenants stepped onto the
scene. The undead multiplied faster than the Caduceans could stop
them.

“Grow some sense, riders. Run back and hide
in your shadows while you can,” Seth said in an amused voice.

Desi cried out. A revenant collided with her,
knocking her to the ground. She flipped up and kicked the creature
under the chin, hurling his body backward. With double swipes, she
silenced it.

“Faris look,” Tobie said just before he shot
three flaming arrows into a group of revenants. He wanted him to
see Hagan who’d somehow captured Teulah. A rock hurled toward his
head, striking him with a dead-on thud. Hagan rubbed the spot and
started toward the bushes behind them.

“Hold your place,” Seth said. “They’re
baiting us, using a played out trick even the ancestor’s pets could
figure out.”

Seth locked gazes with me. I gave him a smile
in return even though my hands were blistered and bleeding. He
shook his head and grinned, clearly amused by the chaos he’d
caused. Ashli wasn’t paying attention. She was lost in the
crystallized sounds of her bells, those little instruments of
death. There was still a line of revenants blocking the path to the
dune, protecting their Tainted masters.