The Vault (A Farm Novel) (7 page)

CARTER

My mind was racing so fast as I turned to leave the radio room I barely noticed that Zeke wasn’t there anymore. He must have slipped out first. I had other things to worry about now. I had to get out of here. Go find Lily, find some way to get her back into a medically induced coma—like I could just pull an anesthesiologist out of my ass—and
then
go get the cure from Sabrina. Because—ah, hell—this wasn’t hard enough to begin with.

At least I had the plane. Maybe I could search from the air. Maybe I could—

In my mind, I was already gone. So deep and so far into crisis planning that it took me a moment to realize the halls were emptier than they were just a few minutes ago. And there was noise coming from down the hall. It took me a second to recognize the sounds of fighting. The brutal thwumps and crunches of fists hitting flesh. The rumble of encouragement from a crowd of onlookers. The chanting jeer of “Fight! Fight! Fight!”

I rounded the corner in a jog only to stop short. I couldn’t even see who was fighting. It looked like everyone on the floor, hell, maybe everyone in the building had crowded into the space. The crowd seethed, surging around the fight in the center raging right outside the copier room, where Ely was being held.

I don’t know how, but somehow I could tell that they were tag-teaming it. Something about the way the crowd shifted tipped me off. It wasn’t just one guy fighting Ely. It was a bunch of guys.

I’d been in a lot of fights and I’d sparred with Ely. He was good. Maybe one of the toughest guys I knew. But no one guy could hold his own when a whole crowd was chanting for his blood.

I heard another sickening crunch followed by a muffled “umph” and disgust rolled through me.

I’d wanted him to pay. I’d wanted revenge. But not like this.

I rushed toward the crowd, pushing people out of the way. “Zeke!” I yelled for help. Because he’d be good in a fight and I needed backup if I was going to get Ely out of this alive. Plus he knew these people. He could help calm them the hell down.

The crowd closed around me and I had to shoulder my way through. “Zeke!” I started to call again, but then the crowd shifted and I got pushed forward, right into the center of the fight. And that’s where I found Zeke.

Some guy I didn’t know had Ely’s arms behind his back and Zeke was landing blow after blow to Ely’s stomach. Zeke’s face was a blank of mindless rage.

Less than thirty minutes ago, Zeke had been the one protecting Ely from Joe. Now he was beating the crap out of him. After standing ten inches from me when I thought about killing him. Shit. I’d done this.

All this anger. All the rage. This was me.

Damn it.

I threw myself at Zeke’s back, but he shook me off and just kept pounding on Ely.

How the hell was I going to fix this? How could I save Ely when part of me still wanted revenge?

The answer was obvious. I couldn’t calm things down until I calmed myself down. How could I do that when I still wanted to take him apart?

And this was it. They might well kill him. Unless I stepped forward and stopped it, Ely would die. Yeah, maybe he was a lying sack of shit, but he’d done it to save his brother. I had to remember that.

I threw myself between Zeke and Ely. Zeke had momentum behind him and a punch grazed my ribs. I twisted away from the punch so his fist rolled off me and then I danced out of his way. While he was off balance, his hand extended, I locked his fist in mine and twisted his arm up under me, holding it between my arm and my ribs. Zeke twisted so his back was toward me, reaching his other hand over his head and behind him. His hand found my jaw and his fingers dug into the vulnerable skin there. It hurt like hell, but I was taller than him. Not by much, but by just enough that he wasn’t able to get the leverage to rip my jaw off.

“Calm down,” I said in his ear, practically yelling to be heard over the confusion. The crowd had surged back when I got in the fight, and a rumble of confusion went through it. “Think, Zeke,” I said, more quietly. Just for him. “You don’t have any problem with him.”

“Bullshit, I don’t!” Zeke’s fingers curved, digging more sharply into my skin. “He didn’t just betray you. He used me to get to you. He used everyone in this Farm. He betrayed all of us!”

The other guy, the one who’d been holding Ely—or maybe someone else even, I couldn’t quite tell—launched himself at my back, trying to tear me off Zeke. A hand dug into my hair, yanking my head even farther back. Which gave me the perfect view of the angry mob surging forward again, ready to take down me and Ely.

Well, crap, this wasn’t exactly helpful.

What was I supposed to do now?

My anger had gotten me into this mess—my pure, driven need for revenge—and my logic wasn’t doing jack to get me out of it.

Somehow the person at my back got his arm—but it was a small arm. A small person. Maybe a girl? Whoever it was, she got her arm around my neck and pulled, pressing the hard edge of her tibia against my windpipe.

The last person to put me in a choke hold had been Lily. She’d nearly kicked my ass and I’d fallen even more in love with her. And now she was in danger, maybe dying, maybe dead, and I couldn’t help her because of my own anger. God damn it.

It couldn’t end like this.

I wasn’t going to let it end like this. I would find a way to help her. One that didn’t involve a bunch more people getting hurt.

I dropped my hold on Zeke, pushing him away from me as I wedged my hands under the girl’s arm and pried it from my throat. She stumbled back. I whirled around, putting myself between Ely and the others.

Crap, the girl was Charla. Three minutes ago, Charla had been a rational human being. Until I’d dosed her with my rage. Great. Just friggin’ great.

“Stop!” I yelled, at everyone and no one. “Just stop! We can’t do this.”

The crowd grumbled with discord, looking unconvinced.

My need to avenge Lily had gotten us into this. Maybe my need to save her could get us out of it. “We can’t kill him. I need him alive,” I said, a plan just beginning to form even as I said it. “Lily is out there and he’s the only one who can track her down.”

Most of these people didn’t know who the hell Lily was and didn’t care, but the fact that I knew, that I cared, that seemed to sink in for them. The fury and rage began to dissipate from the crowd as people blinked, looked around, and seemed surprised to find themselves there. The emotions eased away, but not entirely. There were mumbles of dissatisfaction as they started to drift past me. That rage and fury still lingered. The people in this Farm had been too angry and too hungry and too helpless for too long. Their emotions had been their own. I’d just distilled it. I’d given the rage an outlet.

The change was most obvious with Charla and Zeke, the two people who’d gotten the strongest dose of my anger. And then there were the other two guys who’d been in the fight, the guy who’d been holding Ely and another guy near the edge with bloodied knuckles. They were the two guards who’d been outside Ely’s room when I’d first gone in.

I looked at the four of them and then, without really turning my back on any of them, I reached down to where Ely had slumped against the wall and grabbed his arm, hauling him up. I pulled him along with me, down the hall to the Dean’s office.

The door was open, the office empty. Thank God there was a bolt on the inside of the door. I released Ely’s arm, letting him sink to the floor beside the door as I threw the dead bolt. And then wedged a chair under the knob, just for good measure. Then I sank to the floor myself, back to the door, and buried my head in my palms.

Roberto had told me I was an
abductura
.

I don’t know that I’d really believed him. Until now, I hadn’t seen any tangible proof. Not like that. Yeah, there’d been times when I’d influenced someone’s actions. Maybe. Like when Mel had been dying and I’d ordered Sebastian to bite her, turn her into a vampire and save her life. But that had been just one guy. At the time I’d thought I’d just made a really convincing argument. And then again at El Corazon when I’d ordered people to save themselves. But it was hard to believe you had special powers when you’d just convinced them to do something logical and in their own best interests. It was easier to believe when you’d single-handedly created a lynch mob.

After a minute, I asked, “How bad is it?”

He opened his eyes at least as much as he could. One was already swollen shut.

His lips twisted into a cocky grin. “Bad enough.”

“You gonna live?”

“I’ve had worse.”

“I don’t believe you.”

He tried to shrug, but winced instead. “I deserved it.”

“Is that why you came here? Because you think you deserved it?”

This time, Ely laughed, which must have hurt more than shrugging, because he cringed and nearly doubled over. “Nah,” he said after a minute. “I got caught. I tried to sneak in and steal supplies. Guess I’m not as good as I thought I was. My boy Zeke took over security and he’s got Greens patrolling the fences during the day, too.”

“You were right about him,” I told Ely. “He’s a good guy.”

“When he’s not trying to kill me.”

I could only nod. Maybe Ely could make a joke out of that, but it scared the crap out of me. What the hell was I going to do? I had to find a way to manage this. Fast. Problem was, I was all out of ideas.

“So,” Ely said after a minute. “I’m guessing you’re one of those
abductura
things Sebastian told us about.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in that crap.”

In the Before, the academy had been attacked by Ticks, and after we’d fought them off, Sebastian had told us all the truth about vampires and about
abducturae
, the humans who worked side by side with them to control the will of others. He’d described it as a symbiotic relationship that allowed vampires to accrue power and
abducturae
to chart the course of humanity, for better or for worse. The guys who’d believed Sebastian had all banded together against Roberto. The idea was, if we could kill Roberto and his
abductura
, then humanity might have a fighting chance.

Some of the guys, Ely included, had thought Sebastian was full of crap. Ely had had other plans. The rest of us could go save humanity. He was going to find his family and get the hell out of Dodge.

Ely shrugged. “It’s a lot harder not to believe in
abducturae
once you’ve been attacked by an angry mob because you pissed one off.”

I couldn’t argue with that, so I said nothing.

After another minute, Ely asked, “So why’d you stop them? I thought you didn’t have time for me.”

“I don’t. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to let a mob kill you. Hell, those people have no idea you tried to turn Lily over to Roberto. Most of them have no beef with you.”

“People want a scapegoat. When someone like you gives it to them, they take it.”

I shot a look over at Ely. He was sitting up a little straighter. He sounded less wheezy. “A scapegoat?” I asked.

“Yeah. Someone that’s easy to blame when shit goes bad.”

“I know what a scapegoat is. I was just—”

“Surprised I knew? What? We were in class together for two years. You think I never paid attention?”

That reminder, of our shared history and years of friendship . . . it only pissed me off all over again. I felt anger boiling inside of me and sucked in a deep breath to cool it down.

As it was, I felt sick to my stomach looking at the damage that had been done to him, not by me but by this force within me that I could barely control.

But I had to control it. I had to. I couldn’t let it rule me. I refused to be the kind of person who abused this power. I would not be like my father.

“Tell me something,” I asked Ely to distract myself. “Why the hell didn’t you come to me?”

He looked at me. “Instead of taking her to Roberto?”

“Yes, God damn it. You had to have known that if I’d realized he had Marcus, I would have done everything in my power to help him.”

“Everything except hand over Lily,” Ely said flatly.

“I would have found a way.”

Ely was shaking his head. “You’ve been there. You’ve seen Roberto’s compound. You know what the security is like. It’s not like breaking into a Farm. At a Farm you can walk right up and they’ll just let you in because they need as much fresh blood as they can get. At El Corazon, they’re keeping track of every warm body on the ranch. Price sent me out to get his daughters for him and the guards had orders to not even let me back in unless I had Mel or Lily with me. I’d seen what we were up against. There’s no way we can defeat that guy. All we can do is try to take care of our own. Stay alive as long as we can, any way we can.”

“No way we can defeat what guy? Roberto? Because guess what? He’s dead.”

Ely looked at me blank-faced for a minute, then he tipped back his head and he laughed. “You are so full of crap.” And then he laughed even harder. “And you must be getting damn good at this
abductura
thing, because I almost believe you.”

“I’m not full of crap. I killed him. I brought Lily to El Corazon for treatment after she was exposed to the Tick virus and—”

“Lily was exposed?” Ely asked dumbly.

“Yes.” I had the urge to curse some more. To punch him again. Something. Anything. I didn’t.

Ely was cursing for me. “Jesus, I’m sorry, man. She wasn’t supposed to be hurt. That was never the plan.”

“Plans never go as expected. You know that.”

“So what now?” Ely asked. “You going to throw me back in the copier room so I can wait around for someone else to lose their shit?”

“No.” I felt calmer, more centered. And the plan I was cobbling together was clearer in my mind. Maybe it was all about focus and planning. Maybe as long as I didn’t lose it, no one else would. It was just a theory, but I didn’t have time to test it out slowly. I had to dive in, headfirst, on this. I pushed myself to my feet. I held out a hand to help Ely up. “I really do need you to save Lily.”

I told him about the helicopter going down.

He stood, wincing as his ribs shifted. He’d probably cracked a couple of them. He slanted me a look. “Last time you trusted Lily to me, I tried to turn her over to the vampires and I nearly got her killed. Why the hell would you trust me again?”