“What’s happening?” Kieran cries out.
“Earthquake!” I yell over the roar of the ground shaking beneath us.
I duck as more rocks and forest debris bounce over my head, nearly taking it clean off. I’ve never known anything like this. The whole world is shaking, threatening to tear us apart, swallow us whole. Kieran yelps in pain and the air fills with the scent of blood.
“Kieran!”
I lift my eyes in time to see Theora struggle to her feet. She attempts to run over to the wounded boy, but her feet keep slipping out from under her. She’s so focused on reaching him, she hasn’t noticed the boulder crashing through the trees, heading straight toward her.
“Theora! Watch out!” I lunge at her, pushing her out of the way just as the rock thunders past, missing us by inches. We both hit the ground hard and I cry out in agony, unable to breathe, unable to do anything but dig my fingers into the dirt as my body rips apart with pain. All I can think is I’m dying, I’m dying, I’m dying, the sensation is so intense. I roll off Theora, gasping for air as shivers of electricity pulse through my veins, rushing toward a single point in my chest. I think the pain is never going to end, and I pray to His Mighty to take me, to let the shaking earth swallow me, anything to end this. Then—
It’s over. The forest is still once more.
And through the silence, one sound drums in my ears.
Ba-boom. Ba-boom. Ba-boom.
17.
ASH
“WHAT DO THEY NEED with so many Night Whispers?” Acelot says, tapping the cage filled with the large butterflies. Their silvery-blue wings flutter, agitated.
“Night Whispers?” Natalie says, looking at me. “Why does that sound familiar?”
“Giselle was grinding them up in her kitchen, back in Thrace,” Elijah answers. “She was putting it in her tea. If you drink it, apparently it makes you really relaxed.”
“Maybe they’re using it as an anesthetic for the patients here?” Day suggests.
“I don’t think they care about hurting their patients,” I say flatly, thinking about my dad. My heart pinches and Natalie lets out a small gasp, feeling my pain. That’s the only problem with being Blood Mates—when my heart aches, hers does too. She turns her blue eyes on me. They’re filled with concern. I look away, trying to hold myself together, but I feel like cracked glass ready to shatter at any moment.
“Purian Rose has been forcing his men to take a new drug, called Wings,” Natalie says, gazing up the insects. “I doubt it’s a coincidence that the men who’ve taken it are all wearing silver butterfly medals, which look just like the Night Whisper.”
“Do you think that’s what they’ve been developing here?” Day asks, glancing at me.
“I don’t fragging know!” I snap, and she flinches. “We’re wasting time.”
I turn on my heel and storm toward the door. The others hurry after me. Natalie gives me a worried look and I take a deep breath, trying to calm myself down. I check to see if the coast is clear before we enter the corridor again. There’s a bloodstain on the floor where Natalie shot the scientist. She gazes at the mark, her face pale. Beetle wipes the stain away with his sleeve before we continue up the next flight of stairs. We approach a single set of glass doors, and it’s immediately obvious this floor is what we’re looking for as in front of us is a large ward filled with hospital beds. Natalie swipes the keycard down the scanner and we enter the room.
The stench hits us first and we all suck in a startled breath. The long ward is painted white, like the labs downstairs, and is lit only by the misty dawn light streaming through the high windows. Hanging from the ceiling are UV lights, designed to burn a Darkling’s skin as a form of torture—we’re severely allergic to UV rays. I shudder, even though the lights aren’t currently on, remembering the holding cell I was kept in when Natalie’s mom questioned me about Chris Thompson’s Haze death a few months ago, back in Black City.
There must be more than two hundred beds in the ward. Shackled to each one is a naked human, Darkling or Bastet. There are even a few unfortunate Lupines who must have gotten on the wrong side of the Sentry guards. They’re all emaciated and stink of urine or worse, their skin covered in seeping bedsores. The humans look the sickest, their skin sallow and sweating, like they’ve got a fever. I wince at the sight of the Darklings, who have had their mouths clamped open and tubes attached to their fangs.
“What are they doing to the Darklings?” Acelot whispers.
“Milking them,” Elijah replies. “They did the same thing to me back in Black City, to extract my venom to use in the Golden Haze.”
Natalie lowers her lashes, ashamed.
“What do they need with so much Darkling venom?” Day says.
No one has an answer for this.
“Come on, we need to hurry. Beetle, Day, you take this side with me,” I say, gesturing to the beds on the right. “The rest of you check the others.”
We split up into our groups and quickly search the faces of the people on the beds.
“Over here!” Elijah exclaims a moment later.
We hurry over to him. A beautiful Bastet woman is chained uncomfortably to the bed by her skinny arms and ankles. There’s only a scratchy-looking blanket separating her gaunt, naked body from the bedsprings and a hard-looking pillow for her head. Asleep on the bed beside her is a middle-aged Lupine with a speckled mane. The word TRAITOR has been carved into his chest. I’m guessing this is Kieran. He stirs, his eyes opening. He looks at me, blinks with surprise, and then gives a lopsided smile.
“You know, you look just like your mom, kid,” he says.
“Thanks,” I say, removing his shackles and helping him up. Acelot drapes a blanket over Kieran’s shoulders, which isn’t easy, given that the Lupine is more than two feet taller than he is.
Elijah kneels beside his mother’s bed. “Mom, it’s me.”
Yolanda turns her honey-colored eyes toward Elijah. A look of confusion and then panic enters them. “Eli?” she rasps, her voice hoarse. “What are you doing here?”
“We’ve come to rescue you.” He unties her binds, and Natalie places her jacket around the woman’s body.
“Is Lucinda here?” I ask Kieran.
“Over there,” he grunts, nodding toward a bed at the end of the room.
Natalie and I follow him over to it. My aunt Lucinda is stretched out on the mattress, her mouth held open with a metal clamp. Like the others, her wrists and ankles are shackled to the bed frame. She doesn’t look anything like the plump, smiling girl from my mom’s photo. This woman is bruised and broken, her black hair cropped so close to her head that there are several bald patches. Kieran gently removes the clamp from her dry lips, and Natalie unfastens the shackles. Lucinda throws her arms around Kieran the instant she’s released.
“Hey, frogface,” Kieran mutters against her cheek.
“Hey, dogbreath,” Lucinda replies. “Took you long enough to get me. I’ve been lying here for three weeks, you know,” she teases.
He chuckles faintly. “Yeah, what can I say? I got tied up.” He releases her and she struggles upright. “You can thank the kid. He came and got us.”
Lucinda’s black eyes slide toward me, noticing me for the first time. “Ash?”
“Hey.” I shrug off my jacket and hand it to her. “We’re going to get you out of here.”
“You shouldn’t have come,” she says, slipping it on. “It was stupid of you.”
I frown. I thought she’d be happy to see me.
Natalie tries to help Lucinda up, but my aunt waves her off.
“I can walk.” She shakily gets to her feet but manages only two steps before she stumbles. Kieran catches her. She doesn’t object when he slips a supportive arm around her.
The other patients stir in their beds, awakened by our voices. They begin to moan and whimper
. I realize we’re still wearing our Sentry uniforms—they must think we’re here to hurt them. I catch Natalie’s eye.
“We can’t leave them, Ash,” she says.
It wasn’t my intention to release the inmates, but now that we’re here, I can’t let them stay like this. These are people’s moms and dads.
“There’s too many, bro. We can’t take them with us,” Beetle says.
“I know,” I say. “Untie them anyway.”
Elijah helps his mom to her feet while the rest of us hurry to each bed and unhook the tubes and remove their shackles. The freed patients help us release the others. Downstairs I can hear movement—the pounding of feet, the click of doors being unlocked, tired voices wishing each other good morning.
The patients don’t wait around for orders; they just stagger over to the open door. I notice two familiar faces among the crowd—Pullo and Angel, two of the ministers from the Darkling Assembly in Black City. Like Lucinda, Pullo’s hair has been closely cut and he’s got some welts on his body, but otherwise he still looks as strong as an ox. Angel hasn’t fared quite as well. She’s beaten and bruised, her lilac eyes swollen, but there’s a hard determination in them. They’ve both wrapped their blankets around themselves. They catch my eye, but don’t say hello. They never liked me, and I never liked them. The only acknowledgment I get is a curt nod from Pullo before he sweeps out of the room with Angel.
“Natalie, over here!” Day calls out, running toward one of the beds nearby.
Lying on the bed is an elderly Shu’Zin Darkling woman with graying hair and purple eyes. Like all Shu’Zin Darklings, her feet are clawed. They’re the only breed of Darklings with that unique physical feature.
“Martha!” Natalie races over to the bed to help Day untie her. They wrap a sheet around the old woman to preserve her modesty.
“Hello, dears,” Martha croaks, standing up. “It’s so lovely to see you.”
Natalie throws her arms around Martha, holding her tight. The woman winces, obviously in pain, but she doesn’t let go. Her legs are shaking, barely able to hold her upright. I jog over to them, and Martha smiles up at me. She used to be friends with my parents and even babysat me when I was a cub, so I have a real soft spot for the old lady. I pick her up and she rests her head against my chest, exhausted.
“We’ll get you home,” Natalie says, giving Martha’s hand a reassuring squeeze.
Downstairs I hear a pop of gunfire, followed by screams.
Lucinda struggles down the aisle toward the door. “We need to leave.”
Elijah helps his mom as we head to the door. The hallway is in chaos, with humans, Darklings and Bastets running in all directions. We force our way through the crowds and hurry downstairs.
The smell of blood hits my nostrils the moment we reach the second floor. There are screams as the Bastets, Darklings and a duo of Lupines leap on the scientists, ripping out their throats or snapping their necks. I spot Pullo and Angel at the end of the corridor, their faces coated in red. My foot skids on a puddle of blood, and I nearly drop Martha. Someone pulls an alarm and the siren wails around the compound. Fragg! It won’t be long before this place is swarming with Sentry guards.
“Head for the truck!” I yell at the others.
They nod, and we push past the fighting Darklings and humans. I hold my breath, trying not to inhale the scent, my thirst mounting. Martha groans, her lips parting to reveal her fangs. This must be agony for her too. I glance at Lucinda. She’s got a hand over her nose and mouth as she stumbles down the corridor, hungrily eyeing a bleeding man on the floor.
We reach the ground floor just as the first wave of Sentry guards crash through the front doors and file upstairs, drawn to the sound of screams. Two guards catch sight of us and raise their guns. I skid around the corner just as a bullet smacks into the plasterboard on the wall behind me. We sprint through the hallways, the two guards hot on our heels. Bullets fly and one grazes Day’s arm. She grimaces but keeps running, clutching a hand to her bleeding arm, her ebony braid bouncing against her back with each step.
We turn down a familiar corridor and race past the laboratories we passed on the way in. The back door looms up ahead, just thirty feet away. Acelot bursts into a sprint and barges through the door. I’m relieved to see that the truck is still parked outside. He climbs in and starts the engine. Day is the next one out, followed by Lucinda and Kieran, then finally Elijah and his mom. Natalie is almost at the door when she suddenly stops and spins on her heel, running toward one of the labs.
“What are you doing?” I cry out.
Natalie swipes the keycard down the scanner and enters the laboratory. I throw a look over my shoulder. The guards are coming. She sprints across the lab toward the refrigerator at the back of the room and snatches one of the vials of silvery-white liquid. On her way out, she notices something on a workbench and grabs it.
“Stop!” one of the guards yells, shooting his gun. The bullet whizzes past my ear.
Beetle whips around, drawing his handgun at the same time, and unloads his clip into the two guards. They crash to the ground, dead.
Natalie joins us in the corridor. In her hand are the vial and a blue digital disc with PATIENT TRIALS written on it. She thrusts them into her pocket as we run outside. The truck’s waiting for us on the road. Beetle leaps into the back of the truck and takes Martha from me. I help Natalie up, then jump in myself just as Acelot guns the engine and we speed down the road. As I shut the doors, I catch sight of groups of Darklings and Bastets spilling out of the lab. Some run down the roads, others scatter toward the forest. In the distance I spot several Transporters heading in our direction. Reinforcements. Several Sentry guards rush out of the building, and one of them spots us.
“Get into the forest!” I say.
I fall against a seat as Acelot takes a hard right, getting off the road. The truck rocks wildly as he drives over the bumpy terrain, accelerating up the steep slope. Everyone braces themselves as we burst into the forest. The light immediately dims as the sun is blocked out by the canopy. Acelot expertly steers the truck through the trees and Elijah lets out a whoop, thumping the ceiling, like we’re on a roller coaster and not running for our lives. Acelot grins. The brothers are really enjoying this. Yolanda chuckles at her son.
Natalie takes out her black syringe case and carefully places the glass vial of silvery-white liquid inside while Beetle bandages Day’s arm. The truck bounds over some bracken, and then we emerge on an old dirt track, which the Sentry must’ve used during the camp’s construction to bring wood down from the forests.
Natalie presses the red button on her watch. “Destiny will be here soon to get us.”
“We need to go to Ulrika’s first,” Kieran says, and Lucinda nods.
“Who’s Ulrika?” I ask.
“My cousin,” Kieran explains. “She’s who we were coming to meet.”
I shoot a look at Natalie. She shrugs, as baffled as me.
“Your cousin lives here? That’s crazy!” Beetle says. “Isn’t she afraid of being caught?”
“No,” Kieran says. “The guards know she’s here. They’ve been told to leave her alone.”
Now I’m really confused. “Why would they do that?”
Kieran turns in his seat, ignoring my question. “Follow the trail for about five kilometers until you meet a fork in the road, then take a right,” he instructs Acelot.
“Are we fetching the yellowpox?” Elijah asks his mom.
A crease forms between Yolanda’s brows. “What are you talking about, sweetheart?”
“The weapon that you came here to get,” Elijah replies. “It’s yellowpox, isn’t it? I saw your research documents back in your lab . . .”
Lucinda scoffs, and Yolanda throws her a cold look before turning back to her son.
“I abandoned that project years ago, when it became clear to me
it couldn’t work; even though some of us didn’t agree,” Yolanda says, sliding a look at Lucinda, whose mouth pinches together. “It would’ve killed all humans, not just those with the V-gene. That was a line I wasn’t willing to cross.”
“If the Ora isn’t yellowpox, then what is it?” Natalie asks.
“The Ora?” Yolanda quizzes.
“The weapon,” Elijah says, clearly confused. “Lucinda mentioned it in the letter she sent you. We’ve been looking for it.”
Lucinda laughs. “Oh Lord,” she mutters.
Elijah scowls, his cheeks flushing. “What’s so funny?”
“It wasn’t the Ora,” Yolanda explains gently. “It was Theora. She’s a girl.”
“I don’t understand,” I say. “How is this woman a weapon?”
Yolanda looks at my aunt. Lucinda sighs and begins to speak. “It all began thirty years ago, with a boy named Edmund Rose . . .”
18.
EDMUND
I LET OUT A STARTLED LAUGH, the sound somewhere between hysteria and joy. A heartbeat. I have a heartbeat! I tilt my head to look at Theora, who is lying on the ground beside me. The shaking has mercifully stopped and a hush settles over the mountain. Theora’s long white hair is strewn with twigs and forest debris. A hand is clutched to her chest. Did she feel something too? We gaze at each other for a long moment. My pulse pounds in my ears, the sound deafening after eighteen years of silence. I have no idea what’s going on, but somehow I know it’s connected to her.
“How did you do it?” I whisper.
“Do what?” she says.
I frown, confused. “My heart . . . ?”
Her brow furrows. “What about it?”
I study her for a moment, wondering if she genuinely doesn’t know what’s going on, or if she’s lying to me, but her eyes don’t give anything away.
“Nothing,” I eventually say.