Ablaze (Indestructible Trilogy Book 2) (13 page)

Black uniforms, short sleeves, and on each of their hands, a tattoo like Cas’s new one.

“This is Leah,” Jared says, into the silence. “She shares your blood.”

My insides turn to ice. I shift my head to face him, a fraction too fast. “My blood?”

“Yes. These are your siblings.” He pauses, as though to let the words sink in. They reverberate around my head.

I can’t say a word. I can’t meet their blank eyes, either.
No. I… he can’t have.

“I’m sad it’s come to this,” he says. “But we’re approaching the final stage of our war. The Fiordans will soon be making another attack. We need to be ready.”

“How do you know that?” I bite my lip. Too curious. But how can I keep my mouth shut when he says something like that? I keep my gaze down, sure he’ll see the anger in my eyes. Sure he’ll see that I wish I’d cut off his head, not his hand.

This is deliberate. Calculated. He must have known I wouldn’t be able to hold my tongue when confronted with
this.
He used my blood to make more Transcendents. Even though he knows what that means. He knows what happens to the others. He orchestrated it.

He tilts his head. “I have spies within the enemy territory, Leah. They keep me updated. I wish I could say we have longer to prepare… but it’s not to be.”

At a gesture from Jared, the twelve Transcendents climb out of their respective glass prisons. I tense inside—is he going to set them on me? Can I beat twelve of them? But no, he won’t want to waste his army on the likes of me.

I’m not the only Transcendent anymore. The truth sinks in, sharp and absolute: I’m not the Pyros’ saviour. I’m just one of thirteen. And we’re
all
at Jared’s mercy.

“It was you who gave me the idea, Leah,” he says softly. “You and Cas. And Murray, of course. The original experiments were horribly inefficient. Cas’s powers were taxed to their limit, yet none of the subjects survived. We’d almost given up hope when the Transcendent came along—an ordinary Pyro, who ran into trouble in a mission and was close to death.” He pauses. “That was the key. To make a true Transcendent, the subject must be seconds from death.”

I don’t say anything. I’m sure he can hear my heart racing.
It can’t be true.
But it fits the facts.

“Such a small distinction, Leah,” says Jared. “But it makes the world of difference.” He pats one of the Transcendents on the arm. “These won’t break so easily. They are combat-ready, naturally, but it won’t hurt to put them through their paces. As the only Transcendent to have been in battle, you will be the standard against which I measure the others.”

So that’s the plan.
Of course he couldn’t kill me without making sure my replacements were ready to fight.

I can’t tell whether he’s fooled by my act, but I bite down on all the other questions clamouring for attention and resolve to find out as much as I can by observing. I’m an idiot for not considering the possibility that Jared would use my blood to make more Transcendents. Perhaps using
mine
and not Cas’s will mean they don’t suffer the same connection Cas and I do. God, I hope so—it’s not something I’d wish on anyone, even these creepy half-alive people. Obviously, Jared’s drugged them with the same stuff Cas was supposed to give to me.

But he didn’t. The new tattoo can’t control his mind, even if it’s apparently impossible to remove. Cas is in his own mind, and he saved me. Again.

I concentrate on that, not the creepy new Transcendents or the sickening implications. If Jared created them… I have a sneaking suspicion it isn’t because he thought I wanted friends.

Jared gestures for me to walk beside him as he leads the twelve Transcendents from the room. They follow us in eerie silence. I don’t say a word either, though I can sense him looking at me, and occasionally catch a glimpse of the bandage encasing his right arm. His heart stopped when I cut him. Why? What did he do to himself?

Corridor after corridor. A maze. I occupy my thoughts with the new information I’ve learned. Jared has spies amongst the fiends. I guess it makes sense. This is the man everyone thought was dead for two years, after all.

I’m not ready. Not just for the invasion, though I should have seen it coming. It’s what I’m supposed to have been preparing for the whole time. But to sacrifice my life? To watch Cas die, to lose every last person in the world I care about?

I’ll never be ready for that. I’ll never be ready to watch the others die. I have to fight this war, not play games with Jared.

We reach the training hall. Each of the twelve pulls a weapon from a sheath at their waist—short daggers with engraved hilts, like mine. They line up, like robots, before the target range. Jared gestures for me to stand beside him.

“This works best with two pairs of eyes watching,” he says. “Tell me if anyone steps out of line or makes an error. We have to be absolutely perfect. Every one of them.”

Again, like robots, the twelve hit the centre of their targets with their weapons. One after another in turn. And again. Next, Jared moves them on to dummies. I keep an eye out for anything odd, but other than their creepy perfection, there’s nothing.

Jared gives a pleased nod when the final Transcendent decapitates the last dummy, and gestures for us to follow him out of the hall.

My nerves are on end. Tension lingers in the air, like that was some kind of test for me, too. Something’s going on that I don’t know about.

But by the time we reach the end of the corridor, I know what it is.

Another door is open wide on a spacious, high-ceilinged room with a large chunk of the back wall missing, replaced by a barred gate. On the other side, there’s movement. Familiar movement.

Fiends.

My throat closes up, and every nerve in my body stands on end, telling me to flee. The twelve Transcendents, however, stand at attention. Expressionless.

No one’s going to help me.

Jared beckons me to follow as he approaches the metal gate, indicating to the Transcendents to stay put. He withdraws a bundle of keys, moving awkwardly with just one arm, but too quickly, he’s bending down to unlock the tangle of padlocks at the door’s edge. Click. Click. One by one, they fall. Until the gate’s free.

He grips a dagger in his teeth, scoring a line across his hand. Blood drips onto the remaining lock, which undoes with a clicking motion. I’ve never seen a lock move like that. But that’s the last thing on my mind right now. I’m thinking about Jared’s foot on the gate, pushing it open, inch by inch.

The shuffling sounds on the other side of the door. Jared letting blood drip onto his fingers, reaching for a metal box. He presses a button.

The fiend within the room roars.

Grasping my back with bloodied fingers, he shoves me through the gap between the gate and the wall. The gate slams shut, and I’m alone with the monster.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

It’s hunched over in the corner of the room. Scaly arms wrapped around itself. Muscled legs bent under the weight of iron chains. Bat-like wings ragged as though slashed through with a sword. It shakes its head groggily, but whatever Jared did with that control woke it up. A voice in my head whispers that that must be how he affects people with the tattoos over distance—but that voice is silenced by the very obvious problem facing me right now.

The fiend shakes its head again, the chains rattling as it straightens up. It’s a hideous specimen, all rock-like muscle, and long tusks. One reaches its knees, but the other’s been chipped short, perhaps broken in a fight.

I breathe in, breathe out. Glance over my shoulder—Jared’s watching me through the bars, face twisted into a cruel smile. If I break out, I give the game away. If I don’t, the fiend pounds me to a pulp.

It’s not a great choice.

Before I can move, the fiend swipes with one clawed hand and I have to jump back to avoid being knocked off my feet. Even with the chains around its legs, it moves frighteningly fast.

And I don’t have my weapon. I have no idea what Jared did with it. But it’s just me and the monster.

The fiend’s groggy, but recovering fast. Its ragged wings extend out, one of them clipping the top of my head. It stoops under the low ceiling, chains dragging on the ground.

I have about three seconds to break down the gate before it gets to me.

The fiend cries out, an ear-splitting, horrible noise, like it’s in pain. I can almost see Jared’s smirk. He’s torturing it. My own nerves ignite in response, and I panic, running for the door.

The claw lashes out, and I duck and roll. The fiend stamps down with its boat-sized foot, inches from my head. Its other fist comes up, this one claw-less but twice the size of the other hand, swollen unnaturally large even for a fiend. It drags the chain behind it as it prepares to deal me a death blow.

Or it would, if I hadn’t kicked it in the shin.

Without my weapon, I can improvise. Punch, duck, roll, and avoid its clumsy feet. I get a few good hits in before I realise, with a sinking in my chest, that I’ve let it get between me and the door.

Crap.

The chain drags as the beast reaches for me—the chains mean it can’t reach the walls. There’s one thing it can hit. Me. And I’m a moving target. I crouch down low and strike upwards with my fist, catching it on the arm. The blow
reverberates through me, but doesn’t hurt. I pretend I’m not in a cave, not deep, deep underground, far from anyone who can help me. I pretend I’m under the open sky, and the fire’s waiting for my call.

There.
Sparks fly from my fist, a flame curling to life. Heat rushes through me, kicking off the last of the groggy sleepwalking-type feeling that’s been hounding me ever since I stepped out of that glass case. I strike the fiend with a right uppercut, and leave a smoking mark on its arm. Another strike, and it takes a step back.
The exhilaration of the fight almost makes me forget I’m trapped, at Jared’s mercy, and he’s planning to leave me in here until I’ve reached my limit. That’s what the test is about.

I have to break out.
I can’t stay in Jared’s games forever, but I can’t take my eyes off the target. The cave rings with the fiend’s frustrated cries as I dodge each strike. I’m not stupid enough to underestimate it even though it’s in chains. It’s as brutal and angry as any of the monsters outside. But all it can do is paw at me with meaty fists.

I dodge a particularly ferocious swipe and find it’s pushed me back against the wall, right beside the gate. A couple more steps, a well-placed kick, and I can bring the gate down.

The fiend roars, lumbering towards me. I’ve been too focused on the door to move quickly enough to dodge its strike. Pain shoots up my left side.
Damn.

I’m bleeding, but I’m lucky it’s a shallow cut. The fiend hisses at me. I edge around the shadows of the room like a cat, just out of its reach. Brace myself.

Kick at the gate.

Pain explodes from the bottom of my foot, and I overbalance, skinning my knees on the hard floor. My vision goes hazy, and my foot throbs again, pain as intense as experiencing Cas’s punishment through our connection.

The door. God, I’m stupid. Of course he’s done something to it to stop me breaking out.

I can’t put weight on my left foot. The fiend swipes again, scraping my skull. Eyes watering with pain, I try to focus on the fire again, but I can’t move my left leg, and I half-stagger against the wall, teeth clenched in an effort not to moan.

The world goes hazy around the edges, but within a few seconds, the pain fades. I move my leg and it doesn’t hurt at all. With every second, I feel stronger. Gingerly, I place my foot down. No pain.

Healed.

Which means I’m still in the fight.

The only way out is to beat the fiend to a pulp, before it can do the same to me. No more dodging—this time, I have to aim to kill.

As the thought crosses my mind, the lights go out.

Oh, hell.

Everything—the cave, the walls, the gate, and the monstrosity in front of me—is smothered in darkness. The fiend goes silent, though the clanking of the metal dragging on the floor continues. This is just another obstacle of Jared’s. Possibly, he’s bored watching me constantly dodging the fiend by now.

Or it’s part of another game.

Fire springs to life on my skin, lighting the way in front of me, but not enough. Another swipe from the fiend grazes my knees. Apparently, the dark doesn’t bother it. Of course, it’s been shut in the darkness here for ages. I’m at a disadvantage. Damn.

I let the fire go out.

It’s hopeless. I’ll have to fight it eventually. But now, I take myself back to the days of living out in the countryside, moving silently as possible to avoid drawing the attention of the monsters. I’m well practised. It’s how I lasted two years. How we all did. We were lucky, true, but not everyone has the natural ability to move around quietly.

My feet barely whisper on the ground, but the fiend’s shuffling movement gives me no clue as to whether it hears me or not. One careful step after another. Closer. Close enough to feel the warm, fetid breath on my face. Raw terror washes over me. I can’t die now. Not here in the dark. Not without saving the others.