Elei's Chronicles (Books 1-3) (17 page)

Hera took a deep breath and released it before she strode forward and jammed the bathroom door shut with a chair. That meant nothing, of course — the other woman could have a beeper with her to alert the others, but at least it bought Hera some precious time.

Sheathing her gun, she turned and with two strides bolted out of the door and raced down the hall to the exit. Someone shouted behind her and she ran faster. Outside, a few passers-by threw her curious looks as she raced down the street to her aircar.

She was a fugitive now, too. Repeated glances over her shoulder showed her a Gultur coming out of the headquarters, shouting something, longgun in one hand.
Nunet in the deep
. When she finally reached the aircar, her fingers trembled so much she almost dropped the key twice before she managed to insert it into the lock. Legs shaking, she climbed into the aircar and turned it on, shooting furtive glances into the rearview mirror at the woman now running toward her.
Damn
.

Hera took the aircar out of the street onto the main avenue and accelerated, weaving between old streetcars.

Who, or what had betrayed her? Had she made a mistake? Had she trusted the wrong person? She turned into another sidestreet as soon as she could, even though she noted no pursuit behind her yet.

No matter who was to blame, the most important thing was to decide what she would do now.

Easier said than done.

Chapter
Nineteen

“
I
think your memory’s all jumbled,” Maera muttered. “I told you, Elei, Pelia can’t have shot you. You were in shock, got all confused.”

Elei gave a half-hearted shrug. He couldn’t argue with that, but the memory wouldn’t fade or change. His head hurt.

“We should leave,” Kalaes said.

“Not yet. The Fleet’s still here. I can hear the
seleukids
. Turn off the torch.” Elei sat with his back against the wall. Once remembered, Pelia’s words rang in his mind.
‘I’m sorry, Elei. So sorry, kid. Good luck.’

They waited in darkness. Kalaes sat next to him, forehead resting on his knees. Maera was curled at the cave entrance, looking out.

“They must have leveled Akmon by now,” Maera whispered.

“Yeah.” Elei closed his eyes, listening. “The Fleet’s moving away. They should be gone soon.”

Why had Pelia said she was sorry? For shooting him? For leaving him? For dying? For not telling him the truth and so getting him into this trouble?

His headache intensified. Fire crawled down his spine, slithered along the back of his legs.
Pissing hells
.

Kalaes shifted. “What if they don’t leave? Why wouldn’t she tell them where she left us?”

Hera.
A Gultur
.

Elei rubbed his forehead. “She won’t betray us.” The sorrow in her dark eyes when she’d leaned over him, when she’d given him the key to the apartment, was lodged in his memory. “I even think she’ll come back to help us.”

“Sure, fe, and I’ll be the king of Dakru.” Kalaes stretched his long legs and popped his back. “Unless she’s still deadly curious to know Pelia’s famous last words. Maybe she’s obsessed with that. She looks like the obsessive kind.”

“She heard me say what Pelia’s last words were.”

“I bet she thinks there’s more.”

Did she? Elei wondered what Hera wanted. She’d been kind to them. Aloof and arrogant, yes, but also perceptive. She must have realized he didn’t remember anything else.

Hera was suspicious of Maera.

He hesitated. “Maera, is it true you worked in a hospital in Artemisia?”

“Sure it is. For three years.”

“She left right after Pelia did,” Kalaes said. “She was always very determined to get what she wanted.”

His torso flashed a pulsing red, which grew darker right over his heart. Elei frowned. Why now? What danger was there? He tried to ignore it and turned to Maera, but her face was blank. “And what was it you wanted?”

She chuckled softly. “To become rich. To escape Aerica.”

“But you returned.”

She shifted toward them and clasped her knees to her chest. “I did.”

Her profile glowed white, but her chest was a deep yellow, her heartbeat red. The new parasite seemed as determined as cronion had been to identify every possible target. Though why it showed him Maera’s vital centers now, as they sat in the calm and quiet, was anybody’s guess. “Why did you?”

“These new Gultur policies make living in the black too hard. They want everyone registered, demand to see IDs and qualifications. I had to leave. Aerica is more relaxed, you come and go and nobody ever checks you.”

“You’ve got no family there?”

“No.”

“She has her father,” Kalaes said.

A father? So why was she denying it?

She humphed and turned away. “He’s not my father. Scum, that’s what he is. I’ve got no family.”

“Hey, come here, fe.” Kalaes opened his arms for her. “What’s with the interrogation, Elei? Leave her be.”

She smiled, scooted over to him. He wrapped her in the nest of his arms, pulled her close. “You’ve got family. We’re family, aren’t we?”

She didn’t answer him, but laid her head on his shoulder.

Elei supposed that was answer enough, and had to avert his eyes. He had that funny, empty feeling in the pit of his stomach again, and drawing his legs in, he hugged his knees. 

Stop it
, he ordered himself.
So they’ve found each other, they’re a family now. Period.

His stomach kept clenching and he ground his teeth against the painful, uncomfortable sensation. Adrenaline. That was it. It pumped through his body, making sweat roll down his forehead, his hands curl into tight fists, his heart pump faster and faster. Why? It couldn’t be the sight of Kalaes and Maera sitting there. No, this had to be…

The distant buzzing finally registered, along with the supersonic booms of
seleukids
.

He scrambled to his feet and lurched to the mine entrance. Nothing was visible yet, no lights or flashes.

“Shit.” He stood there, hunched over, panting. His knees wobbled. They’d been found. Again. This time leaving their hideout would be hell. In the night, on the mountain slopes, losing one’s footing would be deadly. “Follow me.”

“Elei?” Maera’s voice lilted with curiosity. “What are you talking about?”

Couldn’t they hear it? “They found us. We have to leave.”

“You’re shitting me.” But Kalaes didn’t sound angry, only frightened. “How would you know?”

“How did I know they’d torch your apartment? I’m telling you, I can hear them coming.” Shit, they had no time. “Please trust me on this, Kalaes. Come on, let’s go!”

He saw them fumble in the darkness, coming toward him, and he was already out on the small platform of the mine entrance. “I can see my way, okay? Just follow me.” He grabbed Kalaes’ hand and trusted him to hold Maera’s.

“Where are we going?” Kalaes whispered.

“Just keep walking.” Elei jogged down the mountain slope, pulling Kalaes along. In his enhanced vision, the slope glowed a faint green. Protrusions cast long shadows and the path glimmered bone white — a faint trail, old and crumbling. The subsonic hum of the engines in the distance grew louder. The Fleet. Gathering again. Coming for them.

He led the others as fast as he dared, concerned that Kalaes was limping and slowing them down. He tried not to look past the sheer cliff on their left, aware that the others couldn’t even see it. They stumbled around a ridge and down a crevice. Pebbles and fine dust rolled down the slope, dislodged by their feet — fine crystals that would reflect any light beam. It was only a matter of time before they were spotted. If they had an aircar, they might make it out before the Fleet zoomed in on them.

Please, Hera. Be here
. Even if it was just to find out what Pelia had said.

He shook his head. He was doing it again, placing his trust in the wrong person. Besides, how would she know they’d found them yet again?

How had she known every time that they’d been found?

Easy. She was a spy, working against the Gultur. She had access to their systems. Insider information.

She was a spy all right, but for the Gultur. Trying to gain his trust. Trying to find what Pelia had hidden and where.

He staggered, tried to focus back on the path. He slipped and almost fell. Maera managed to keep the three of them standing.

A bird flew overhead, white and bright against the night, hooting softly. An owl.

“This is mad,” Maera whispered. “You’ll get us killed, Elei, and for what? We should have stayed in the mine. I can’t see anything. The
seleukids
are gone.”

But she was wrong. They zoomed closer with each breath and sent shivers over his skin, raising goosebumps.

“Hurry up!” A complex of standing stones stood further down, ghostly gray. If they reached it, if they lay low and hid in their shadow, perhaps the Fleet would move on.

Yeah, and Hera might grow a sense of humor.

Hope was a terrible thing. Racing off the path, he pulled on Kalaes’ sweaty hand and glanced back to make sure Maera tagged along. They hurtled down, skidding and slipping. Maera tumbled and only Kalaes’ death grip on her hand kept her from rolling off.

The rumble of the Fleet was deafening. Elei groaned, scrunching his eyes shut. “Can you hear them?”

Maera straightened, leaning on Kalaes’ arm, and they started again their descent, sending clouds of dust and pebbles down the slope and up into the air. “I can hear something.”

They wouldn’t make it to the standing stones.
She’ll come
, he kept telling himself.
Hera will come
. But he wasn’t sure he believed it anymore.

The hum of
seleukids
rose in the air and their lights flashed against the dark sky as they approached. Maera whimpered.

“Pissing gods in the deep,” Kalaes said, forcing the words between heaving breaths. “Shit.”

The stones loomed, tall pillars of rock, like some forgotten temple. Flashes of red, green and blue lit up the landscape, and Elei’s possessed eye throbbed and itched. He sprinted toward the stones, dragging the others with him.

“Faster!” His lungs burned and the healing wound in his side pulsed to his racing heartbeat.

A large, deeper shadow detached itself from the standing stones. Long and tall, it looked like an aircar. A scent of ripe fruit and flowers mingled with the acrid stench of
dakron
fumes.

Elei staggered and slowed down, hardly daring to believe it. “She’s here.”

“What are you mumbling about, fe?”

He dragged them on. No light betrayed the aircar’s presence. But he could see her light through the aircar windows, her body heat. It pulsed silver and gold.

“Elei, where—?”

The door of the aircar dropped open with a loud hiss as they approached.

“Come in,” Hera called out dryly, fine brows knitted, mouth pressed in a thin line. “Hurry.”

“Well, I’ll be damned”, Kalaes said in a hushed voice as he climbed in. “Elei was right.”

Elei followed, pulling Maera behind him. “Don’t sound so surprised. I’ve been right before.”

But the main thing was that Hera had come back, or never left.
Thank all the gods and their powers.

Silent, they took their seats on the
nepheline
benches. His heart still boomed and the sweat was cooling on his back as he sat next to Hera. In his aching eye, she was a phantasmagoria of colors, changing as she moved. She switched on the flight mode and took them out fast, dipping down to the plain, zigzagging between standing rocks. She seemed to follow no pattern, no route, but suddenly she stopped the aircraft in the shadow of a slope or grove and waited. Kalaes and Maera gripped their seats hard and looked at each other, shrugging.

“Why are you stopping?” Kalaes asked.

Elei heard the boom of the
seleukids
in the distance. The Gultur parasite, Regina, seemed to allow Hera to hear the supersonic and subsonic sounds, just like his new parasite allowed him.

A niggling fear twisted Elei’s insides. All these things he could now do - being able to hear the Fleet from afar, see the slopes, smell Hera from a distance — what would the flip side of these new abilities be? What would the new parasite demand of him?

The sound of the Fleet approached, then receded like a great wave on a beach.

“Any more questions?” Hera ground out. Nobody answered.

Elei rolled his eyes discreetly.

With fits and starts, Hera led them away from the mountain, toward small towns and villages. Factories littered the countryside and fungi fields phosphoresced, yellow and green, like great avenues cutting through the night.

The silence became stifling.

Kalaes spoke first. “Thank you, Hera.”

“Are you nuts? What are you thanking her for?” Maera thumped her fist on the seat. “She left us stranded, almost got us killed.”

“Be thankful I came for you again,” Hera muttered.

“Why did you?” Kalaes asked.

It was the question of the day.

“Listen, you ungrateful bastards,” Hera said in an uncharacteristically quiet, shaky voice. “Until now I had access to their system and put my life in danger to help you. This time, not only did they locate you, but they found out I was helping you. Sobek’s tail, I do not know how! I have been flushed out. Now they’re after me, too.”