Ablaze (Indestructible Trilogy Book 2) (22 page)

“No way. You… tampered with whatever he’s injecting himself with? What did you do?”

“It won’t kill him,” says Cas, with a disappointed edge to his voice.
“That
part of the experiment worked. But he’ll be out cold for a while. I’ve been searching every lab. Didn’t realise he’d put you so close to the unstable area.”

“Unstable? You mean the hole in the wall?”

“Yeah. He didn’t put anything in you, did he?”

“Wires.” I hold up my wrists, but they’ve healed. “Never mind that. We need to find out if he brought any of the others down here. Elle…”

“They’re dead,” says Cas. “Ryan said no one survived.”

My heart plunges. “No. Jared had her as a specific hostage. He wouldn’t do that. She’s his niece!”

“He doesn’t give a shit, Leah. I’d have thought you’d know that by now.”

“I
do
know that,” I snap. Unbelievable. We’ve been reunited all of two minutes and he’s already managed to wind me up. “Having Elle as a hostage will make Murray do anything he says. He wouldn’t kill her because he’s not done screwing with us yet. He might be totally batshit, but for all he knows, he might need Murray’s help in the future. Or hers.”

A pause, then Cas nods, surprising me. “Good point. Question is whether he’s too scared of losing face to admit to his brother he majorly fucked up. He’s been claiming to hold the moral high ground as long as the two of them have been at odds. His pride’s taken a hit because this whole invincibility thing isn’t working out for him. And that makes him even more dangerous. Now he’s killed most of the people he marked, after losing most of his guards. They ran for it when the Pyros came to get you out.”

So some of them got away.
At least not everyone died thanks to Jared’s depravity. But… Val was marked, and she wasn’t amongst the others when he killed them. I saw her in the vision of Cas at camp…

“Val. She didn’t get hit, did she?” I ask, my heart beating faster.
Please not her, too.

Cas shakes his head. “No. As long as the asshole’s sedated, he can’t screw with anyone left with the marks. It’s a damn good job I knocked him out. Come on.”

He indicates the way he came, down the corridor in the direction of the training rooms and beyond that, the other labs.

I hesitate. “Where?”

“I locked him in his own lab,” says Cas. “We need to get back to Murray before he does something stupid and reckless.”

“No, we need to find
Elle,”
I say. “He won’t have put her in…” I swallow. “The labs?”

Cas’s eyes narrow. “I didn’t see her. But I haven’t checked the labs on the other side of the fiend cages. I’m pretty sure you guys killed both of the security fiends, but I don’t trust him to lock those cages properly.”

My heart plummets. “He can’t have put her in a
cage,
can he?”

“Maybe. There’s nothing that way, thanks to the people who decided to blow a hole in the wall.”

“Fine.” I follow him, arms crossed, feeling the absence of my weapon like a nagging voice in the back of my head. “He didn’t have my dagger with him, did he?”

“Not that I saw,” says Cas. “Was it not in the room with you? I thought he was doing one of his usual mad tests to see if he could hurt you by breaking your weapon.”

My insides twist. “Let’s hope not.”

But it’s a reminder that the visions are never far behind. What I saw when I was unconscious… Murray thinks his daughter is dead. However long has passed since I saw that, the sooner we find Elle, the better.

I can’t afford to think about the alternative.

The corridors are eerily quiet, but signs of the damage from the fight earlier remain. Crumbled pieces of rock. Fiends. No bodies. The guards took their chances and ran. No wonder Jared was pissed off enough to kill the others he marked. In one second, he activated that tattoo and…

My hands curl into fists. “Can’t I strangle him in his sleep?”

“Wouldn’t work,” says Cas. “And even Pyro hands can’t tear through his enhanced skin. You’d need a blade, but there weren’t any weapons in the room with him. Looks like he cleaned out the weapons room, too.”

“Then where’s yours?”

He doesn’t answer.

“This really isn’t the time to be all secretive, Cas,” I snap. “If you have any idea where my weapon is, tell me.”

“I haven’t a damn clue,” he says, through clenched teeth. “He took mine from me when his Transcendent scum knocked my lights out after you escaped.”

I wince inwardly. “What happened then, anyway? You disappeared off the face of the Earth, while Jared took me and his creepy clones to beat the crap out of each other for his amusement.”

“He did that? When is he gonna
quit it?”
He slams a fist into the wall, so suddenly I jump. Stone crumbles to the floor, and his hand falls to his side. “I’ve had about enough of his twisted crap. I’d literally tear him to pieces if I could, but I can’t. There’s no other way out…”

I draw in a breath. “We’re finding Elle. Getting back to the group. Unless you do have a way to kill him. What about that bomb?”

“Yeah, about that. We’re probably standing on it.”

“Would that kill him?”

“I don’t think he’ll die. It’ll wound him, but once he crawls out of the rubble, he’ll be pissed.”

“I can’t think of a better idea,” I say, and start walking again. “Other than at least making sure no one else is stuck down here first. Especially Elle.”

Cas makes an impatient noise, but follows me, swiftly catching up. As the shock of waking from the vision wears off, I can push my legs to their limits again, regardless of the slippery blood under my shoes from the lab. I march on, checking behind every single open door. The labs are oddly bare, which strikes me as wrong. As does the absence of weapons.

“What’s his game this time?” I mutter. “You were here longer than I was. How many hiding places did he have?”

“I already checked his quarters,” says Cas. “Not sure we should be more worried about the missing weapons, or that eight of the Transcendents are unaccounted for.”

“Eight?”

“Four were in the room I locked him in.”

“And there was another in my room.” I shudder. “He was in a pretty bad way.”

“Damn. So that leaves seven. More than enough to take out the others, if they get aboveground. I hope Jared being out of it means they’ll shut down, but we can’t count on that.”

“No, but it’s a start,” I say. “They shut down before. But that was when he told them to, I guess. Last I saw they were in a room just down from the fiends’ cages.”

“Right,” he says. “I’ve combed the whole east side of this place. Only place I haven’t checked is beyond right here. I didn’t go near the cages when I was scouting around.”

“You mean, when you were hiding,” I say. “Seriously. I’m not impressed. You let him play sport with us while you went running around without even trying to get us out. What the hell is this plan of yours?”

Cas stops dead. He turns to face me, his expression a furious mask. “I was trying to save your damn life.”

Before I can ask what he means, a deafening crash makes me spin around. Cas swears, and drags me after him by the arm. “Bet the bastard’s trying to break down the door.”

“I thought you knocked him out!”

“I did. Never knew how long it’d last with his crazy new enhancements.”

“Brilliant,” I say, savagely. “This is just what we need right now. So, fight or run away?”

The choice is obvious. This might be the most vulnerable position we get him in… but it’s also most likely our only chance to find Elle. I can’t fight Jared without knowing he can’t hurt her anymore.

We don’t have time to search every room, so I’d better hope my guess is right. I put every ounce of Pyro-Transcendent super-speed into my stride. In no time at all, I pass by the door to the training room, mentally ticking off a list in my head. If I’m assuming this room, where I met Val under the tattoo’s control, is the one I saw in my vision, there’s nothing in there but a mess. The door’s wide open, and a glance tells me the Transcendents aren’t in there. I check the other rooms, then turn a corner at the corridor’s end. This way leads to the cages. A faint shuffling raises the hairs on my arms.

Footsteps sound behind me, and I tense before realising it’s Cas. “I reckon she’s in one of these cages,” I whisper. “Are there empty ones?”

“That way.”

We edge past the one where the fiend almost took me to pieces. I hear shuffling on the other side. Jared’s pet’s still in its prison.

A growling noise follows me, and a faint sob comes from my left. From the cage with the fiend. Every drop of blood freezes in my veins.
No way.
It’s dark in the cage. Too dark even for the fiend to see.

Jared locked Elle in with the monster.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

For an instant, I stare, suspended in horror. Cas grabs my arm and drags me away from the door.

“We can’t do anything.”

“The hell we can’t. You can’t seriously want to leave her here?”

“I don’t
want
to do any of this,” Cas says quietly, through clenched teeth. “But opening that door will set that monster on her instantly.”

Damn. He might be right. The only way she could have survived so long is if she kept really, really quiet. It’s so dark in there, and I must have done some damage to the fiend when I fought it.

A rattling crash echoes from back the way we came.
Jared,
I think immediately, and Cas tenses again.

“It’s us or her,” he says.

“We have to try.”

“No, we don’t.” His voice is a whisper. “You really want to set that thing loose in here? She’ll die, you’ll be Jared’s plaything again, and that’ll be the end of the others. There’s no way around this, Leah. We’re not meant to save everyone.”

I can’t speak. A lump blocks my throat, and my hand clenches so tight I can envision the lock splintering under my touch, the bars giving way as I pull Elle to safety.

“Get out of here.” I force the words out. “Go warn the others, just in case this goes wrong.”

“You’re shitting me.” Cas doesn’t move.

Fire flares around my fist, which pretty much speaks for itself.

Another crash.

“Fine.” My heart beats wildly. I know Cas is right, deep down, but I can’t seem to accept it. Not now. Elle never should have been dragged into this, and I’ll never forgive myself if I let her die. I reach for the cage’s bars, squinting into the dark. I can make out a small, human-shaped huddle a metre away from the bars. She hasn’t seen us yet. From what I remember, the fiend’s chained up ten metres away… which gives us about three seconds.

Lucky we Transcendents move fast.

I take in the challenge, examining the cage bars from all angles. Examine the lock. I take a deep breath.

“Don’t you dare,” says Cas, leaning over my shoulder.

I say nothing, and as carefully as I can, I reach for the lock and snap it off.

A shuffling sounds, alerting me to the danger. The fiend already knows someone’s outside, and Elle’s right in its path. I throw caution aside and yank the bars out from the roots with a wrenching noise loud enough to wake the dead. In another second I’ve darted to Elle’s huddled shape and pulled her aside. She lets out a squeak of surprise and then a scream, but I can’t see to cover her mouth in time.

The fiend’s massive paw misses us by a hair’s breadth. I jump back several feet, knocking the twisted remains of the door aside. The fiend bellows and Elle screams again. Her round, terrified eyes meet mine.

“Leah,” she whispers.

I manage a half-smile and back away a few steps, colliding with Cas. He swears. “It’ll have those chains off within a minute,” he says.

“Good. The fiend can slow Jared down.”

On cue, a deafening crash carries down the corridor.

A sinking feeling tells me Jared beat down the door of the room Cas imprisoned him in. Which means…

I set Elle down on her feet, but she slumps against my side. Cas makes an impatient noise and lifts her over his shoulder before I can move.

“Come on,” he says, his expression hard.

I have no idea what to make of that, but getting out of here as fast as possible is the best move right now. Except we’re on the opposite side from the exit, and Jared’s seriously pissed off.

Cas’s already hurrying the other way. I run to keep pace, and we clear three corridors before I remember running this way before and ending up in the dark. I don’t know what he’s thinking, but I have to run to keep up. More corridors fly past. The place is like a giant rabbit warren.

“Wait,” I hiss. “Seriously, Cas, do you even know where you’re going?”

“Out,” he says.

“There’s another exit?”

“I haven’t seen one, but there must be. Jared brought in the fiends this way.”