The Takeover (39 page)

Just like that, it was over. No more Emporium guards came through the stairwell or elevator. No one was still standing except Renegades.

“Ritter?” I asked Dimitri, wilting against him.

He shook his head. “We were separated.”

“I can’t feel him.”
Just like I can’t feel Cort.

A hand touched my arm, and I turned to see Ava. I hadn’t even felt her coming. “Erin, this was only their main contingent. Someone down there will be gathering a second wave. We have to go through with the takeover. And fast.”

I remained where I was. Something whispered that if I moved from this hallway, a part of me would stay behind forever, and I’d only be half alive. Was this what happened when a sensing Unbounded lost her mate? Agony finally burst through the numbness, all enveloping. I pushed Ava and Dimitri’s hands away.

“Erin,” Ava said, unyielding. “We haven’t lost this yet, but we have to calm the people below.”

“I have to find Ritter,” I said.

She searched the hallway for a moment. She didn’t have my connection with Ritter or my mental strength, so I knew in this confusion she wouldn’t be able to tell one person from another. Yet for a moment, I let myself hope. Then she said, “I know.”

I could see her sadness. The pity for me. But how could she be so calm?

Oh, yes, I knew how. Over the years, she’d buried too many babies, and also husbands she’d loved. She’d lost them and continued living and fighting and loving. So would I.

“Wake Stefan and Ropte,” I said, the words barely audible through clenched teeth. “Get them started. I’ll be right there.”

I staggered on—alone, I thought, until I realized Dimitri was with me. His hand reached out to mine and held on tightly. Warmth tingled through my body as he used his ability to find my wounds and increase the healing process. The horrible ache in my shoulder subsided, but not the agony in my heart.

My goal was the knot of men sprawled in the hallway where Ritter had gone down. I could see a few life forces glowing, though so dimly as to be almost nonexistent. Other lumps showed no glow. We found Ritter lying on two unconscious men, the neck of one clamped tightly under his arm and his legs scissoring the other. Three others were on top of him, two bleeding from knife wounds to the heart.

Dimitri and I each pulled off a man. I gave a strangled gasp of relief.

Ritter’s life force was one of those still glowing, despite the ugly gash severing a fourth of his torso. His head was still firmly attached. However, I still couldn’t feel the essence that was him. Had someone damaged him mentally?

Tears stinging my eyes, I pulled off the remaining soldier and lay next to Ritter, reaching my mind toward his. There he was. I could feel him now that I was touching him, even through the emotions that threatened to crush my heart.

While Dimitri held his hands against Ritter’s wound, I fumbled through Ritter’s pockets to find his emergency curequick. “This is bad,” Dimitri commented.

I didn’t know how Ritter had survived here alone, until I looked at the last soldier I’d pulled off Ritter. His face was different now, slowly morphing from an Emporium soldier into Oliver. Our illusionist wasn’t much of a fighter, but he had fought, and he certainly had chosen a great disguise.

“Oliver?” Dimitri asked, keeping his hands on Ritter. “Looks like he managed to hold onto the illusion for a time even after losing consciousness. I’m impressed.”

“Don’t tell him,” I said. “He’ll never let us forget it.”

Dimitri chuckled. “Maybe you should get back to Ava. Ritter’s breathing, but it might be a while before he awakes.”

Ritter’s eyes suddenly came open as he growled, “Cut the racket, would you? I was just taking a little break.”

The lights chose that moment to come back on, so either Mari had reset the relay switches, or someone below had broken into the transfer boxes and fixed them.

I gave a laugh that might have sounded more like a sob. “No time for rest,” I told Ritter. “We have a takeover to finish.”

BY THE TIME WE GOT
Oliver squared away and Ritter doctored enough to get back to the conference room, all the Emporium dead in the room had been cleared. Only Tihalt and two unfortunate mortal Emporium soldiers had been permanently killed in that conference room. The other twenty Emporium soldiers who had fought there would recover, including Edgel. Lew and Jeane would also survive, but something had happened when Lew shot Jeane. His shields had vanished, and his mind was now empty. Ava didn’t know if he’d ever recover.

The New York Renegades and the former prisoners were now clearing the corridor, using the other meeting rooms on this floor as makeshift hospitals. So far, forty-one mortal Emporium soldiers and twenty-three Emporium Unbounded had been permanently killed in that hallway, but at least sixty more would survive.

The Renegades had suffered far less damage overall, due in large part to Ritter’s strategy and Mari’s shifting. We’d permanently lost three Renegades from the New York cell, including Tenika’s second-in-command, Li Yuan-Xin, whose combat ability had been legendary and who had always been kind to me. Five more had fallen from the thirty-four former prisoners who’d fought with us.

And Cort.

Cort, whose passing had numbed my heart so deeply that I still couldn’t feel my connection with Ritter unless I touched him. In fact, I could no longer detect anyone’s thoughts without touching them, except Jace, to whom I still clung.

“You’ll recover once the shock is over,” Dimitri said, his hand on my shoulder still sending healing into my body. “Losing someone this way, and then that scare you had seeing Ritter go down . . . it’s too much.” His voice became so thick, I could barely understand the words. “It’s too much for all of us.”

“I don’t want to forget Cort.”

“You won’t. We never forget.” He opened a large vial of curequick and added, “Drink this. The faster you heal, the faster your shock will wear off.” I gulped down the sweet mixture, welcoming the buzz that chased down my throat and slowly spread throughout my body.

Feeling Ritter’s stare, I looked down at him where he sat on the couch by the wall of swords, swathed in bandages, his eyes burning with a hurt that dug into me as deeply as my own. That he didn’t reach out his hand told me he understood our shared grief was a burden neither of us could take right now.

“Let’s finish this,” he said.

I nodded. “Okay.”

Ropte and Stefan were conscious and seated on separate couches to keep them from attacking each other. Someone had found them clean shirts and roughly bandaged their wounds.

“Just don’t let Ropte touch you,” Catrina warned, walking over from the minibar where she’d begun setting up a makeshift office. “That’s how he can change memories. It’s the only way, though, because he’s a raider, not a mnemo.”

I remembered how she’d handed me the coffee when I was about to shake Ropte’s hand. She was being equally helpful now, making sure Ava had every access to the computers and the Triad’s passwords—a good thing because I didn’t know if I could enter an unblocked mind, much less force my way through any shields.

“Why are you helping us?” I asked her.

She smiled, her eyes straying to Jace, whose wounds were being sewn up by Keene. “Because I saw in your brother’s mind that everything my family has heard about the Renegades is true. I grew up watching the Emporium use my family’s abilities in the name of good, and I wanted to believe, but when I Changed I learned the truth about the corruption that drove those lofty goals. When my mother tried to leave, Delia and Stefan killed her. Today I am finally taking steps to avenge her and every Emporium agent who has ever believed the lie.”

“You’re a traitor!” Ropte spat.

Catrina’s head turned in his direction, slowly and deliberately. “Not to the human race, I’m not. And I might be Unbounded, but I’m still every bit human. Besides, you’re the one who stole Stefan’s memories. The one who planned to steal Erin’s memories and place her in the Triad in Stefan’s place as your puppet. You and Tihalt planned it together. I saw it in his mind.”

During most of Catrina’s conversation, Stefan had remained expressionless, but now his face twisted with hate toward Ropte. “So that’s why he’d never give me the laser weapon,” he snarled. “He was planning a coup.”

Ropte shrugged. “We needed it to subdue your soldiers.”

“And I suppose he helped you go against my orders to kill those senators. This is all your fault!”

“Those senators were resistant to me.”

“You’re just not that good, are you?” Stefan mocked.

“I made you forget your supposed daughter.”

“I told you killing them would draw too much attention.”

Ropte sneered. “Your way took too long.”

“
My
way didn’t make Renegades interfere. I would have put you in the White House.”

“And then I still would have killed you!”

Stefan tried to launch from his couch at Ropte, straining at his bonds, but Ava shoved him back down. “It doesn’t matter now. It’s over. You’ll sign the documents passing your share of the Triad and all your Emporium holdings to Jace. Ropte, you’ll do the same for Jeane.”

“Actually,”—Catrina waved the tablet she was holding—“Stella’s been able to get into Ropte’s Emporium database with the codes I took from his mind, and it looks like Jeane is already his successor.”

“
She’s
the best you could do?” Stefan mocked Ropte. “An infertile woman? What a great legacy. How is she going to find a successor?”

Ropte stared him down. “It was only until I found someone better. At least I knew she wasn’t going to stab me in the back.”

“I guess altering memories has its advantages.”

Ava cleared her throat. “If you two are quite finished,” she said, “I’d like to get started.”

Stefan shifted his gaze to Ava, his eyes telling everyone how much he’d love to wrap his fingers around her neck. “What about Tihalt?”

“You know how it works better than I do. You and Ropte will both sign an agreement saying that he wanted his newly returned son to fill his place.” Ava’s voice skipped on the word son, and I knew she was thinking of Tihalt’s other son. The one we didn’t yet have time to mourn. “If Tihalt’s real successor shows up, we’ll deal with him then. We may not be able to change memories, but we can remove them.”

“It’ll never work,” Stefan growled.

Keene looked up from where he was finishing a last stitch on Jace’s arm. “Tihalt never made public appearances. At least he never did when I knew him. He left all that to Stefan. He even communicates mostly over email with his department. So maybe for now, we can pretend he’s still alive, and I’ll start showing myself around here to get people used to seeing me again before we publicly transfer the title. That way we won’t have three new Triad members at once.”

Ava thought about it. “That’s sounds reasonable.”

Stefan had the gall to laugh. “It won’t work. My soldiers will be up here before the hour is out.” He gestured to the feed from the security cameras, which had been restored with the generator power. We could see Unbounded suiting up all over the building, and a crowd gathering on the floor below. “It’s going to make the bloodshed you’ve already experienced nothing more than an appetizer.”

Ava showed only confidence. “As long as we have you, they won’t dare come in with too much force.”

“My real successor is in London.” Stefan’s smirk deepened. “He won’t take this sitting down. Make no mistake. Even if you succeed today, tomorrow he’ll be here with an army.”

“Exactly,” Ropte said. “His heir has everything to gain if Stefan is dead. He won’t mind murdering everyone up here, including Stefan.”

Stefan scowled. “The only one of us he’ll be murdering is you.”

“There will be no reinforcements,” Ava said. “We did have to break our blockade when we shifted inside, but a group of Hunters took our place. Even if reinforcements come, they won’t get past them.”

“I’m going to drink your blood,” Stefan promised.

Ava sighed in exasperation. “Somebody gag him. Gag them both. Until we’re ready to record the video footage to send downstairs.”

As Jace and Mari jumped to do her bidding, Ava drew me aside, close to where Cort had been cut down. I avoided looking at the blood that soaked the carpet, but memories of him assailed me. Especially memories of a particular restaurant he’d taken me to when I’d first Changed, and how he’d told me about his château in Paris and promised to take me there.

“Stefan’s right,” Ava said, her back to our prisoners, her voice stretched to a breaking point. “We need to calm those people downstairs. We’re too vulnerable here. I’m thinking a succession announcement will have to wait a week—or more. We’ll get it all signed today and move Stefan and Ropte and all the wounded guards out of here, but for right now, it’s better to have Stefan announce that his son has been returned to him and with his help, they were able to overthrow a Renegade plot. Catrina says they have speakers and video screens about every twenty feet throughout the entire building, and in every work station and private residence. They should all hear his message.”

I chewed on my lip as I tentatively sent my mind downward to the gathering masses. Dimitri was right—now that things had calmed down, I was already regaining some control. “I don’t know that it’ll work—no matter what we tell them. The panic coming from below is strong.”