The Disappearance of Ember Crow (31 page)

Neville pointed to his eyes, then to me and spoke. I couldn’t make out his words either. I still knew what he was saying.

I’ll be seeing you, Ashala Wolf
.

He and the Blinker vanished.

I waited a few moments in case it was a trick, in case they came back to get us. They didn’t. I’d been too slow and too stupid and too late, and Neville had escaped.

I turned back to Wentworth. Daniel was lying on the ground with his eyes closed. He didn’t seem to be bleeding any more. “Will he be okay?”

“He should be.” Wentworth’s skin was sallow and she was sweating. “He’s not entirely out of danger yet, but I have to rest my ability a little before I can use it again.”

I kneeled down, handing her the stunner. “Take this. I think there’re other Illegals trying to get to the Prime; I’ve got to go try to stop them.”

She pushed it back at me. “No. You need it.” She stood up. “Help me drag him inside. We’ll hide until this is all over.”

Good suggestion. Wentworth was thinking more clearly than I was. I leaned down, and between the two of us we pulled Daniel into one of the nearby buildings.

“Stay here,” I told her. “Lock the door and don’t come out.”

She frowned, peering into my eyes. “Ashala, have you hurt your head?”

“Knocked it a bit. I’ll be okay.”

“I can try to help–”

“No. Save your strength for Daniel.” I gripped hold of her arm. “I’m counting on you to keep him alive. I know you won’t let me down, Rae.”

She raised her chin and nodded.

I ran for the dining hall, stunner in hand. My balance seemed to be a little off, but I was confident I’d be okay. At least, I was until I tried to call Jaz so he could let Connor know I was coming. The message bounced back and forth inside my skull, seeming to scramble my brain. I leaned against a wall, waiting for the pain to pass.
No mindspeaking with a head injury
.
Good to know
. Maybe I should’ve let Wentworth help me. Only she’d looked bad, and Daniel had looked worse. And I was not leaving one of my own to die in this place.

The pain faded, and I righted myself, continuing my slightly shaky journey towards the dining hall. As I got closer I smelled the dreadful scent of burnt flesh.
Firestarter
. I slowed, and huddled between two buildings to spy out what was ahead.

Small fires were burning everywhere, and there were charred bodies strewn across the ground. It seemed as if a lot of enforcers had converged on this place, and died horribly for their trouble. The big doors to the dining hall were closed, but I could see odd flashes of light through the high windows. Connor was in there, I could sense it. And burned across the wall were words, the same ones that had been written in blood in the hospital.
We are everywhere
.

Despair crashed over me. People would see those words and come after Illegals, after the Tribe …
no
. I hadn’t failed yet. Wentworth would speak for us, and as long as we could keep the Prime alive, there was hope. I had to find the Firestarter. Maybe in the dining hall?

I was contemplating a dash across open space to the door when a fireball came flying towards my head.

I hit the ground. It sailed over me and set my hiding place alight.
Can’t stay here!
I ran out, shooting the stunner in the direction the fireball had come from. I caught a glimpse of the Firestarter – a tall, skinny boy – two buildings away. He was laughing as he lobbed more fireballs. I dodged, and kept firing as I weaved my way closer, trying to get a clear shot. But my head was spinning, and all my movements were a little off. Fire caught the edge of my arm and hand, burning me and the weapon. I dropped it, rolling back and forth across the ground as I tried to put out the flames. I expected to be incinerated at any moment.

The fire went out, and I staggered up, in terrible pain from my burnt arm, but miraculously alive. Then I saw why. The Firestarter was down, flat on his back with a sword in his side. Jeremy Duoro was sprinting away. “Run!” he yelled. “Take cover!”

I didn’t need to be told twice. The Firestarter was badly hurt, and when one of them died, their body released an inferno that reduced everything in the immediate area to ash. I had no idea if having rhondarite in him would prevent a death inferno or not, and I wasn’t prepared to put it to the test. I stumbled away, collapsing into the shelter of a wall, and looked back.

Just in time to see the Firestarter yank the sword out of his body, and send flames blazing at Duoro.

I screamed a warning. Duoro flung himself to the ground.
Not fast enough!
The fire caught him across his shoulder and left side. The Firestarter collapsed again, and I lurched out, throwing myself on top of Duoro to smother the flames. Then I grabbed hold of what remained of his shirt and dragged him into a corridor between buildings, ignoring his screams of pain. I had to get him away from the Firestarter and out of the vicinity of another attack or a death inferno, whichever came first.

I crouched at his side, trying to assess how seriously he was hurt.
It’s bad
. A significant amount of Duoro’s body was burned. Too much of it. He needed more help than I could give him.

He blinked, staring at me out of unfocussed eyes.

“Jeremy, it’s Ashala. I’m going to get Doctor Wentworth.”

Even as I spoke I knew it was useless. I doubted Wentworth had the power to save another life, and I’d never get her back here in time even if she did.

Duoro seemed to understand that he didn’t have long. “Please …” he whispered. “Don’t leave. Stay with me.”

I slumped, reaching out to take his uninjured right hand.

“Got him, didn’t I?” he rasped. “Saved you.”

“Yes.” I wanted to cry; I held the tears inside and kept them out of my voice. “You saved me.”

“Always wanted … to do something that mattered. Couldn’t save … the others.”

He was dying and there was nothing I could do about that. But there was something I could say. Leaning over, I hissed fiercely, “
The children are alive
. Do you hear me? The detainees weren’t eaten by saurs. It was a trick, a way for us to save them without anyone knowing the Tribe was involved. They’re alive and they’re
free
.”

His face changed, shifting into an expression of incredulous joy. I’d never seen anyone look so – hopeful.

Then the light vanished from his eyes, and his stare became blank.

Jeremy Duoro was dead.

I’d thought only moments ago that I wouldn’t leave one of my own to die in this place. I felt as if one of my own just had. I wanted to sob and to shout and to scream at the injustice of it. I wanted to rip Terence Talbot and Neville Rose and everyone like them to pieces. Instead I hauled myself to my feet and peered out into the centre. The Firestarter wasn’t there any more. There was only the sword, lying where he had been.

I could easily track where he’d gone by the blood trail he’d left behind – not towards the dining hall but away from it, around a corner and out of sight. It didn’t matter; he wasn’t going to last long. I went for the sword, picking it up. It wasn’t much of a replacement for the stunner, but it’d do. Then I started towards the dining hall, and Connor.

That was when my battered, half-scrambled brain kicked into gear.
The blood trail
. There was only one thing the Firestarter could be heading for in that direction. The main gates, and then …
the grasslands
.

From what I’d seen of the minions, it would be about right for one of them to want their death to cause as much damage as possible. He couldn’t pick a better target for fire than grass, and he had a strong ability.
The fireball in the sky … all those burned bodies outside the hall
… His death inferno would be nearly impossible to put out, even for the saurs with their armoured scales.

If he reached the grasslands, everything would burn.

Jaz?
I yelled. The mental shout seemed to bounce off the walls of my skull, sending pain shooting through my head. I couldn’t reach him that way.
The saurs will stop the Firestarter before he gets to the grass
. Only – would they? All they’d see was one injured boy limping towards them, and it took exceptional circumstances for the saurs to step off the grasslands. They might not recognise the nature of the threat until it was too late, and while Jaz and the saurs might be immune to fire, the rest of the kids in his Tribe were not. How many of those wild children were hidden in the grasses today? A lot, they’d been out in force to keep watch on the Adjustment. Not to mention all the animals, the pretty speckled snakes and spiky hedgehogs and furry hopping dunnarts and the hundreds of others that made their home in the grass.

I wanted to run to Connor. Whatever he was dealing with must be bad, or he would have defeated it by now, besides which I could feel a faint sense of exhaustion tugging at my senses. He needed me. But I had to make the right choice, the choice he would want me to make. We stood between our Tribe and Jaz’s Tribe, and the trees and the grasses, and danger.
He is of the forest. I am of the forest …
I had to take care of this first.

I snarled and sent Connor the only help I could. I sent him my faith, my absolute confidence that there was nothing he couldn’t do, casting that belief out into the air and hoping he received it.
You are Connor, and you can do the impossible
.

Then I went after the Firestarter.

When I rounded the corner I could see two charred bodies ahead of me. The gate guards must have still been at their posts. Now they were dead. They were away from the gates too – they’d clearly run towards the Firestarter, either because they’d seen him as a threat or because he’d fooled them into thinking he needed help. He was only a skinny kid, after all. Jeremy Duoro’s voice echoed in my head: “But they’re teenagers – surely they couldn’t be assassins.”
Oh, Jeremy. I warned you
. This teenager was able to kill without a moment’s thought, as if it was nothing. As if life was nothing.

And he was headed for my friends.

I hurried to the gates, which had been pushed open just enough for someone to get through. The boy was about three quarters of the way over the long stretch of gravel that separated the front of the centre from the grasslands, where saurs were stalking about in the distance. Some of them watching him but none of them seemed overly concerned. As I’d feared, they didn’t understand the danger.

I’d never get to the Firestarter in time. But I didn’t have to. All I had to do was warn the saurs, and their hearing was exceptional.

I clung to the gate and screamed at the top of my lungs, “Firestarter! Firestarter!
Firestarter!
”

Reptilian heads swiveled towards the boy, and scaly bodies began to move in his direction. He reacted, flinging three fireballs ahead of him in quick succession. Flames tore across the grasslands, licking at the sky. The boy began to run to the grass. Even in his injured state, he was fast.

The smallest of the saurs was faster. Hatches-with-Stars came hurtling through the fire with Jaz clinging to her back. She raced across the gravel, skittering towards the Firestarter. He tried to dodge. He wasn’t quick enough; her clawed feet trampled right over the top of his body. It was enough to kill him.

I knew it by the sudden, massive storm of fire.

The heat was so intense I could feel it from where I stood. I huddled behind the gate, hoping desperately to see Hatches and Jaz emerging from the blaze. Only they didn’t.
Come on, come on
… Firestarters didn’t burn, and saur scales were so tough they were immune to pretty much anything. But a death inferno incinerated the body of a dead Firestarter. Would it destroy them too?

My heart thumped against my ribs, every beat more painful than the last as anxiety constricted my chest. Out on the grasslands, the saurs rolled, trying to put out the fires started by the fireballs. And, gradually, the inferno began to die.

I was terrified of what the dying flames would reveal. Terrified of seeing a small burned body and a larger reptilian one. I peered into the fading inferno – and gaped at the sight of Jaz, arms out-flung, fire streaming into his body.

The firestorm wasn’t dying. It was being
absorbed
.

Jaz’s skin seemed to glow from the inside as he took the flames into himself.
I’ve never heard of a Firestarter being able to do this!
But I’d never heard of a Firestarter being caught in another Firestarter’s death inferno either. I watched, awestruck, as the flames vanished and Jaz shone. For a second he sat there, a beacon of blazing light, and I worried that he’d burn from the inside out. Then he lifted his arms to the sky and sent flames shooting upwards, disappearing harmlessly into the air.

I sagged in relief. Hatches wheeled towards the grasslands, and Jaz looked back, worried about me. I didn’t think I could manage another yell, so I gave him a thumbs up signal, and pointed to the grasslands.
I’m okay. Go put out that fire
.

The two of them sped away, Hatches screeching her triumph, and the other saurs trumpeting back. I went in the other direction, heading for the dining hall with the sword clutched in my hand.

My head spun, and my burnt arm hurt. It seemed to take forever to get there. When I finally reached it, I crept up to the big doors and eased one open. The scene inside was so chaotic that it took a few moments to make sense of what was happening.

A slim, black girl was standing a few metres ahead. She had her back to me and her hands raised, sending blue bolts of energy crackling into the hazy air in front of her. She was firing her bolts into whirling dust and little stones, a dirt storm that occasionally thinned enough for me to catch a glimpse of people huddled behind upturned tables. I couldn’t find Connor, but he had to be responsible for the mini tornado of earth.
He’s making it hard for the – Electrifier? – to see
. Hard for her to aim.

That wasn’t all he was doing either. Every time a shot of electricity sparked out, something flew in its way – a chair, a tray, a table. Objects were flying towards the Electrifier too, except she just blasted them away.
It’s a stalemate
. Only it couldn’t last forever, and Connor was going to lose this fight. He was trying to protect all the people in the room. She didn’t care who she hurt.