Elei's Chronicles (Books 1-3) (51 page)

“Move it,” Alendra said loud enough to be heard by anyone and set off toward an open door at the other end of the hall.

He lurched like a drunkard after her, knocking into tables and garnering curses and boos.
Cool it, Rex
. The parasite thought he could still run out of the Palace and save himself, but truth was, it was already too late for that.

Although, if he turned about and crossed back to the exit, with all the guards racing to see what those shots had been, perhaps he could escape, run through the streets.

Dammit, no!
Balling his fists, he staggered on, and he’d reached the door Alendra had gone through when Rex sent another wave of crippling pain down his limbs. He gripped the ornate frame not to fall, his body jerking.

Screw this, he wouldn’t make it. Coolness on his cheeks told him he was crying. His legs shook. He tried to call Alendra’s name but he couldn’t speak, his throat closing with the pain.

Quick, light steps, and he braced himself for a blow from any Gultur passing by.

But it was Alendra’s concerned face that swam into view. “Elei, what are you doing?”

He closed his eyes, dizzy. “Me?” He swallowed hard. “Just hugging the wall.”

“What is it?” She glanced back and forth, skittish. “We don’t have time.”

He nodded and pushed off the doorframe. “It’s Rex.”
I’m okay. All is well. All is fine.
Carefully, he forced his knees to straighten.
I’m safe. Hear that, Rex?

“You’re sick, aren’t you?”

“I’m fine.” He focused on the map in his mind, refusing to let the pain stop him.  “If you worry I’ll infect you, go back to the tunnels.”

“No, dammit, Elei.” Her voice turned to steel. “We’re doing this together.”

Surprised, he looked at her fine profile, but she stared ahead. He’d have said something to that, but a guard stood by a grand door, a longgun pointing to the ceiling, and he fell a step back, praying nobody had heard them talking.

The light inside the Palace was dim, like candle light, radiating from niches in the walls. For the eyes of the Gultur, it had to be more than enough illumination. For him, the corridor was bright as day, but for Alendra it was probably hellish — walking without seeing what lay ahead.

They continued in silence through the wide corridor — well, she walked, he staggered. They passed two sets of guards playing dames and knaves, or chess, he couldn’t quite see. Rex’s reaction was changing now, sharpening, the pain lessening.

Just another step. Just another breath
.

Another pair of guards, turning to look at them pass, their chests pulsing the orange hue of the fire, their heads a throbbing yellow.

Breathe in. Breathe out
.

The colors receded to a fainter glow, and he stumbled as the real skin of the world resurfaced, throwing him off balance.

Alendra caught his arm to steady him, a flicker of worry in her cat-like eyes, and he remembered how she’d almost fallen to her death in the tunnels. A hot wave of protectiveness washed over him, left him blinking dazedly. That couldn’t be Rex. Rex didn’t care about protecting anyone but its host.

He wouldn’t let her die. He had to find a way to force Rex to protect her, too.

Chapter
Twenty-One

T
he corridor
wound around the Ceremony Hall, a huge oval, guards posted at each heavy metal door.

Elei concentrated once more on Alendra’s feet, marching before him, to keep calm and not give Rex another excuse to bring him down. Their luck had held so far, but they should hurry. Who knew what was happening outside the Palace, if Kalaes and Hera...

Gods, stop it. Too late to walk out now. Don’t think
.

A cat meowed. The creature ran to him, then kept pace. It wasn’t his Cat — this one was a striped one, bigger and heavier, but, gods, its eyes were the same light blue. Elei slowed. Had Cat infected others so fast? How many of the sick creatures were in the Palace? How could they help him?

He glanced at the doors they were passing. At the end of the corridor, they’d see the gate to the Temple Court, they’d pass it and turn left, bypass the gate leading up to the Echoes’ apartments, and all the way to the end. Then—

“Where are you heading?” The grating female voice startled him to a halt.

“He’s to scrub floors in the Echoes’ apartments,” Alendra said, managing to sound disdainful and bored at the same time.

“You cannot go up. Are you new here?”

Elei saw her from the corner of his eye, a beautiful Gultur, eyes dark as night, hair a golden brown.

“Yes,” Alendra said in a neutral voice. “Started working here about a week ago.”

“Then you should have paid better attention, mortal.” The Gultur lifted her chin. “Maturation time is soon. It hits some of the Echoes hard. They go quite mad sometimes, killing any mortal they see.”

He heard a barely audible gasp from Alendra, and he knew she’d thought the same as he had: would that happen to Hera?

Hera and Kalaes
. They had to hurry.

Alendra seemed to be thinking the same, because she bowed to the Gultur. “Then he’ll scrub the floors of the Offices and the Library instead, if that’s all right.”

The Gultur made a non-commitant grunt and nodded.

Alendra gestured for him to follow. He did, meekly staring at the floor.

The Temple Court gate loomed like a black mouth ahead. Guards dressed in what had to be ceremonial garb stood on either side — long, metallic tunics down to their knees, red pants, their hair caught on top of their heads in complex loops with silvery rings. That reminded Elei of Kalaes’ braids, and he reached up to pat his pocket where they rested.

They passed the crimson gate leading up to the Echoes’ rooms, staring straight ahead and hoping the previous guard hadn’t communicated with the others.

The Offices came up next, rows and rows of desks with data processors, Gultur bent over the screens, typing and reading. Elei gaped, ignoring the stabs of pain Rex kept sending through his body. He’d never seen so many processors at once. Then they passed by the library and he dared peek inside. So many scrolls and bound books in glass cases.

Alendra strode on faster now, and he followed suit. Two more cats joined them, padding silently along the wall, a gray and a white one with black feet, both blue-eyed.

He hurried on, trying to empty his mind of fear, so that Rex wouldn’t try to stop him again. But thoughts kept rising to the surface, carrying in their core anger and foreboding and unease. So, instead, he thought of Pelia, of his dreams and of the medallion with the word ‘below’ written on the flip side, thought of Jek and Afia and their trust in him, of everything that brought them to this place, at this moment.

Many people had put their trust in him. He couldn’t fail them.

Alendra slowed and he looked up. There was the door they had to go through, the gate to the vault with the safety boxes. Nothing remarkable singled it out, only that it was the third in line after the gate to the Central Court, an ornate, gilded affair flanked by four visored guards whose icy stares raised goose bumps on Elei’s flesh.

And now this unassuming door, black and unadorned, without a sign or a guard, possibly hiding a great secret.

Or nothing.

Alendra approached the metal code pad and raised her hand to it, pursing her lips.

He stood guard at her side, checking the corridor, taking deep breaths to calm Rex. Nobody would expect them to walk right into Dakru City, into the Gultur Palace. That’d be pure madness.

It
is
pure madness
. If Pelia’s code didn’t work, alarms would go off, guards would come running and they’d be dead.

He forced the fear down.

Alendra brushed her fingertips over tiny indentations, muttering something under her breath — cursing or trying to remember the long code Hera gave them. Left and right, the corridor appeared empty, but for how long? His pulse was accelerating again, the pain rushing up in a wave to pull him under.

With one stride he reached Alendra, shoved her aside and raised his hand over the keypad.

Alendra grabbed his shoulder. “Hey, what—”

The rest of her words were swallowed in the tide of pain that followed. He slapped a hand over his mouth to muffle a gasp and leaned against the door.

Do it. Now
. The longer he wasn’t in immediate danger, Rex would insist on trying to send him running away.

He pushed back, took a deep breath. The numbers and letters flashed in his memory, laid out perfectly, adrenaline firing up his brain like an aircar engine. His hand shook. He curled his fingers into a fist until his nails bit into his palm.

Then he reached up again and brushed them over the pad, keying in the code.

The door hissed open into a deeper darkness.

***

“I can’t see a thing,” Alendra whispered as he pulled her inside and closed the door behind them.

Even he could barely see. The outline of the door glimmered in silver. Alendra’s form was yellow and blue, a faint red over her heart. Then his vision sharpened, and he saw the darkening bruise on her cheek, the doubt in her golden eyes.

He turned around and stopped. They weren’t inside the vault yet. His stomach sank as he took in the huge, round door, made of solid metal.

“Do we have another code?”

“Another? What for?” She fumbled forward, bumping into him and yelping.

“It’s just me.” He grabbed her arm and steadied her. “There’s another door.”

“Shit.”

His feelings exactly. “Did Hera say if she’s ever been inside here?”

“I don’t think so.”

Frigging hells
. He ran his fingers over the polished surface. In its center was another keypad. “Gods damn it.” He smashed his fist on the door. All this pain and worry, and putting everyone in danger, to stop here. “We don’t have another code.”

“Only the one for the safety box.”

“Yeah.” Only that one, engraved on his Rasmus. He took a sharp breath. Pelia would have thought of this. No way she would have sent them here only to be trapped between the two doors. Which meant... “Give me my gun.”

Alendra fumbled at her belt and he caught it, tracing the numbers on the barrel. “What if this is the combination?”

“I thought Hera said that was for the box.”

“Me too, but what if it’s not?”

“Then we don’t have a code for the box.”

“One thing at a time. I’ll try this.”

“And if it’s not this one?”

He grinned, a savage pull of the lips, even though he knew she couldn’t see him. “Then we’re really screwed.”

Before Rex flared again, before his pulse went into overdrive, he passed the code from the gun to the pad, pressing the stiff keys. Something clicked inside, then something else, and wheels turned.

He pushed. The door opened.

The vault arched over them — the cupola. Peepholes in the domed roof allowed rays of light to pierce the gloom, criss-crossing space like a golden spiderweb. The lockboxes were beetle-wing black, matte and absorbing all light, inset in the walls of the vault.

“Gods below.” Alendra turned in a circle, the rays catching on her pale hair and refracting, so that her face glowed like the sun. Breathless, he watched her until she spoke again. “How are we going to find the right box?”

“Hecate.” He looked up and around at all the boxes. They were numbered, but didn’t bear names. “Wasn’t there a code number Hera mentioned?”

“Yes.” Alendra frowned, tapped a finger against her lips. “Hundred and fifty?”

He grinned again. “Hundred and fifty three.”

He set about following the numbers, Alendra checking the other side. The numbers drew them deeper into the vault, where silver dust danced on the captive rays and swirled in tiny eddies. Excitement pounded in his veins when he finally saw the number they sought, embossed in metal. He reached up, touched it. Next to it was the now familiar keypad.

The code
. He closed his eyes, pooling everything he knew, the clues Pelia had left, the information Hera had shared. “The code is a series of numbers,” he whispered to himself, to hear the words in case they made better sense that way, “but there is sometimes a word before the numbers. Hera said so.”

“What word?”

“No idea.” He saw again the medallion, the hymn to Hecate, the names of the Seven Islands, then the word on the back.
Below
. “Below.”

“What?”

Could it be that easy? He licked his lips, suddenly parched with thirst. “You don’t think the alarm will go off if I get this wrong, right?”

She shrugged, her face pale. “Maybe you get three tries?”

He certainly hoped so. His pulse quickened, roaring like an enraged animal in his ears. “Stop it.”

“What did I do?” Alendra asked, her voice rising.

“Not you. Shit.”
Focus
.

“Hey.” Her soft voice from his side — very close to his ear — cut his breath and wrenched his gaze to her face. “What are you going to do?”  

The truth? Get us all killed
. “I have an idea.”

He entered the word, then the numbers, fast, before he pissed himself.

Alendra caught his arm, her breath hissing out. A red light blinked on the keypad and something in the walls whirred.

Wrong
.

Hells
. Was there another clue that he’d missed?

“One word to put before the numbers. That’s what Hera said.” He barely stopped himself from banging his head against the box. “It’s not the one I thought. Any suggestions?”

Alendra bit her lip, her nostrils flaring, her eyes wide with fear. “How should I know? What about her name?”

“Hecate?” It was worth a try. He had nothing else to go on.

Hells, he hoped the others were still alive. Rex pounded the inside of his skull, so hard he thought it would crack. His fingers shook so much now he had to stop and breathe in, breathe out.

“Let me do it,” Alendra said.

“No, I’m all right.” He typed in the name, then the numbers, glancing from his Rasmus to the keypad.

The red light blinked again and the same whirring noise came from the walls.

Alendra’s breath came in gasps, and his own lungs felt too small in his chest.

“This isn’t working,” she whispered, her voice thready. “We should get out while we can.”

He knew what she meant. If the third try failed too, then the alarm would go off and they’d be dead.

“Go.” He shoved her gently toward the door. “Now, before I try again. Before they know. Find Hera and Kalaes, get back into the tunnels and leave while there’s still time.”

She resisted. “No. Not going without you.”

“Why the hells not? Nobody will blame you.”

She shook her head stubbornly, her ponytail swishing through the air, splintering the light. A small smile flitted on her lips. “No. Kalaes would probably flay me alive. Better die here.”

“Are you sure?”