Ablaze (Indestructible Trilogy Book 2) (19 page)

“We do now,” says Ryan. “We’re going to stake it out. I know he has all kinds of batshit-crazy monsters in there, but we can’t afford to let him live any longer. If Murray’s thing works…”

“Murray’s thing?” I ask, but at that moment, a crowd descends on us.

“Leah’s alive!”

Poppy and Tyler launch themselves at me and hug me, almost knocking me off my feet. “Whoa,” I say. “Calm down.”

“We thought you were dead,” says Tyler. “Poppy was frantic, she thought Nolan had abducted you in the middle of the night.”

Guilt sinks its claws in me. “It’s kind of complicated. I’m sorry I left you guys.”

“You’re back now,” says Poppy. “You went into Jared’s lair alone?” Poppy exchanges raised eyebrows with Tyler. “Did you really miss Cas that much?”

She gives me a look, like she wants me to start on about what a wonderful person Cas is, underneath all the sarcastic bitterness. Except I can’t exactly do that. I have no idea what I think of him, let alone whether he’s a good person. I think he is, but how do I know what I think isn’t the result of our bizarre connection?

“We couldn’t afford to lose another warrior, could we?” I say instead.

“You’re hopeless,” says Poppy with a slight flicker of a smile.

Tyler grins. “You have to tell us all about Jared’s creepy place. Does he really have robot servants?”

I start to speak, but the words won’t come. Jared’s torturing Cas there right now. And how many brainwashed-but-innocent people died because of us?

“Sorry,” he says quickly, his mouth pulling into a frown. “I forgot. It was probably awful for you, wasn’t it? I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.” But it isn’t. None of this is fine, not a bit. I’ve dragged all these people into danger, and it’d be doubly hard to ditch them again if I decide to go after Jared. But I can’t beat him alone. Even with Cas.

If he’s alive.

Stupid thought. Cas is pretty hard to kill.

The image of him on that table fills my head.

Stop.
“Look, I need to talk to whoever’s in charge of the camp,” I say. “This is important. I hoped Murray might be here, but he’s going to be pretty mad at me for telling you all this.”

“Telling us what?” asks Poppy.

“Leah?” Val’s back, and she hands me a flask of water. “Come over here.”

They’ve made a campfire, and it startles me to see the sun sinking. The red of the sky never changes. I lost all sense of time underground, and the memory of the fiends stalking me in the cold night rises again as it always does when I’m outside.

Two other Pyros, the senior members I vaguely recognise, argue with one another. Now I’m closer, I can pick up the drift. They’re talking about the tattoos. And Jared.

“We can’t let him live,” says one, Peter, with a brief look at Val. “How many more of us has he marked up? What about the others at the base?”

“I think we should be talking about how she didn’t
tell
us,” adds the other guy. Garry. “How many more of you have those tattoos?” he shouts across the campfire in general.

“Tattoos?” Poppy exchanges glances with Tyler, puzzlement etched on both their faces.

Crap. Did Jared only call Val, or are there others from the base under his control coming this way? He implied as much when he threatened me.
Oh, no.

“If you’d all
be quiet,”
says Val, raising her voice, “I’ll explain.”

“Explain what?”

“Why you ran out on us?” says a younger guy. “I thought you’d joined Jared’s lot.”

“Quiet, guys,” says Ryan. “Val was under… mind control?”

“Not exactly,” says Val. Now everyone’s listening. The other Pyros, about twenty-five of them in total, move closer around the campfire. “Look, I’ll be honest. I don’t think we have a lot of time to debate, but I guess I owe you an explanation. How many of you were mentored by Jared back when he was Murray’s equal?”

Two hands go up amongst the senior Pyros.

“He marked some of us as his special favourites… literally.” She pushes up the red sleeve of her coat, and peels back a bandage on her forearm. Of course. The cut from my dagger when I broke the mark won’t have healed. I instantly feel ashamed for assuming everyone has crazy healing powers. What’s the matter with me?

Val raises her arm to reveal the mark, and the cut slicing across it, gleaming in the firelight. “This gives him the power to control me through blood. I don’t know everyone he marked, but that’s what he did to Nolan. He can inflict horrible pain on us, if he wants. Nolan betrayed us because he was afraid of that.”

Silence, aside from the fire’s crackling.

“So… yeah. It’s messed-up. I thought he was dead, and the whole thing freaked me out, so I never told anyone about it. Even when Jared came back, he didn’t use the tattoos, except on Nolan.”

“And Cas,” I say quickly. “That’s why he got caught.”

Val catches my gaze, surprise flashing in her eyes. “So that’s why…”

“Yeah,” I say. “Did he use it on you while you were at camp?”

“Must have done,” says Val. “I don’t remember most of the past day, up until you cut the mark, Leah.” Her voice shakes. “The others back at the base don’t know, but some of them will be marked, too.” And that’s the cue for the silence to end as the air explodes with questions.

“Did he do it to everyone?”

“Mind control’s impossible, even for
them.”

“Jared’s capable of anything!” Val shouts over the group. “It’s more than that. Leah has something to tell you.”

My heart sinks. But I have to tell them, now. Even if it kills their faith in Murray.

“All right,” I say, once it’s quiet. “Murray didn’t want anyone to know this, but I expect you’ve all heard the term
Transcendent
?”

I assume from the silent response that means yes.

“Well, that’s me. At least, I’m one of them. It’s complicated, but Cas’s blood healed me when the fiends attacked me. Just before I came to the base.” He’ll be pissed at me for sharing his secret, but what does it matter now?

“Healed you?”

Confusion ripples through the group. Val nods, confirming she knew, but it doesn’t look like many of the others did. I briefly run through the history of the Transcendents, from my arrival at the group, Murray thinking I might be Transcendent and then realising Cas’s healing me must have made it possible. Then I explain about Jared’s experiments and how they tie into the whole thing. “I had no idea about any of this until Jared threatened us.” I’m trying to get the words out as quickly as possible. “Jared wanted his hands on me
and
Cas, so we went to him to stop him attacking the base. I managed to escape and his lab was destroyed by the fiends, but Jared survived the attack and took Cas. I wanted to stop Jared using his blood to create more Transcendents.”

“So that’s why?” asks Garry, loudly. “I thought you just went back because of him.”

Doesn’t take a genius to figure out he means Cas.

I narrow my eyes at him, in a pretty spot-on imitation of Cas himself. “I went in there to kill Jared. It didn’t quite work out that way.”

“So he doesn’t have you under mind control or anything?”

“No. Those tattoos of his control you through blood, but they don’t work on Transcendents the same way. He tried to use an injection on me instead, but Cas sabotaged it.”

People are muttering to one another, but I raise my voice. “Jared kept me prisoner and tortured me, the same as he’s doing to Cas. He’s made twelve of his own Transcendents, but he also took my blood and used it on himself. I don’t know how, but he made himself into one. Like the engineered fiends. You can still hurt him, but he’ll heal himself. The Transcendents are the same.”

This time, the shouts drown out my voice. Questions. Accusations. I let them wash over me, then shout, “Listen!”

Amazingly, the noise quietens.

“It’s up to you if you want to attack him or not. I don’t know how we escaped the lab so easily, but I’m betting he’s up to more twisted crap in there, and his insanity’s drawn the fiends’ attention. He’s right by the divide. If they attack us again, they’ll wipe us out.”

“So will Jared,” says a despondent voice. “You’re telling us we’re doomed either way?”

I can’t answer. I don’t know myself. Only that we’ve survived for too long to give up now.
Cas has a plan. He said he did.
“This was always a long shot,” I say. “Us against the fiends. But I killed one of their leaders before. They’re not invincible. And his Transcendents were in pretty bad shape the last time I saw them. They might not die easily, but they can be injured.”

“And that’s where our plan comes in,” says Val, who’s taken this news with surprising calmness. “Our new weapon. Murray’s, really. We haven’t tested it yet, but we always work on the assumption that our targets are going to be wicked-tough to kill. It’s basically an energy blast, but contained.”

The dim light of the campfire shines on a shape in her hands. Looks like some fancy kind of electronic device, but the reddish colour of rock.

“What
is
that?” I ask.

“Murray scraped it together,” says Val. “It’s… a bomb, I suppose. He used bits of technology scavenged from the old labs. We’ve been gathering the stuff for months. It’s supposed to be fiend technology.”

Fiend technology. Their leaders are an intelligent species. A chill runs down my back at the thought of so many enemies waiting out there. What is there to do? Set Jared and the fiends against each other and hope some part of the planet survives another war?

“So you planned to… to blow up the lab, with him inside it?”

“Yes, but we don’t know if he’s reinforced the place or not. That blast earlier when we were escaping was a smaller version, a test-run, right?” She nods to Ryan. “It took out one of the walls, but not enough. We’re not sure how much ground Jared’s place covers, but for it to have survived that long, he must have done something to it. If the bigger bomb went off, it’d bring down the ceiling, crushing everyone below. We were going to do it as soon as we got you out. Even a Pyro can’t survive it. But that was before you told us…”

“He can’t die.” Damn. I’ve killed their hope. “His servants can, but they’re not Pyros. If it’s like an energy blast, we can’t die either, right?”

“No. It’ll only take out the enemy. I planted it before we left.”

A moment passes. I stare at her. She looks tired, sad, but resolute. Others wear similar expressions, though my ears pick up on a whispered argument about Murray and Jared being in cahoots. The experiments. I don’t have time to argue with all the dissenters now. Not with everything depending on us making a decision as quickly as possible.

I let the general noise resume while Val exchanges words with Peter, the senior Pyro. The other, Garry, is arguing with Ryan. Sounds like Garry thinks we shouldn’t have bothered coming. It wasn’t worth the risk. I don’t particularly care what he thinks of me, but it’s a reminder that I’m the one who took the risk without thinking half the Pyros would come after me and wind up in danger. We were lucky not to lose anyone.
Too
lucky. The only explanation is the vision, and even that makes no sense. What was Jared doing to Cas that was more important than chasing us off?

I’ve shared as much as I can with the group, but they’re demoralised enough already. Several shout questions at me. I ignore them.

“Val,” I say, in an undertone. “Can I talk to you alone? It’s urgent.”

She glances at another Pyro, who’s in the middle of gesturing at the metal contraption at her side. The bomb. None of us can die from a regular, non-Transcendent energy blast, but I eye it warily all the same.

“One minute,” says Peter. “You have a
lot
to answer for, Leah, but if it affects our plan…”

“It does,” I say.

Once I’ve checked no one’s listening in, I ask, “How do you use the bombs?”

“With Pyro fire,” she says, showing me the device. “I planted one in the lab and I was going to activate it as soon as we got out, but I wasn’t sure we’d get out of range in time.”

“Seriously?”

“I’d do it now, if I could.”

“Cas is in there.” Sure, he can’t die, but burying him under a ton of rock with Jared after everything he’s been through already isn’t a fate I’d wish on anyone else. Especially after all the trouble I went through to find him.

“If he’s the one who can create Transcendents in the first place, then…” She cuts herself off. I stop mid-curse as I see she’s struggling not to cry. “What choice do we have? Jared’s entire team’s in there and it’s the one way to take them all out at once. There are innocent people under Jared’s spell, but if it wins us some time, Leah, we might have no choice.”

I can’t fault her for that. I slump to sit on a rock beside her. “Look, this is going to sound weird. But healing me isn’t the only thing Cas’s blood did to me. It… changed me. I sometimes get these weird flashes, like visions, where I can see what he does. Sometimes it’s a memory, sometimes it’s not. But they’re real. I feel when he gets hurt. It’s like we’re connected.” I’m rambling because her expression is incredulous, and panic threatens to overwhelm my tiredness. “It’s got worse lately. That’s what happened when we were climbing out of the lab. I saw… him. Cas. Jared was torturing him again.” I stop. “It’s my blood. The Transcendents are linked through my blood, but they don’t get the same visions. It’s all connected, though. I can influence them, like… you know how the fiend armies seem to work together? It’s the leaders. They use blood control, something similar.”