Persuasion (The Wild and Wanton Edition) (45 page)

Grace frowned. “Hear what?”

Just then, the lights flickered. A distant rumbling seemed to seep in through the walls of the facility.

All of the hopeful chatter in the room faded and then fizzled out as people began to look around curiously.

A huge clap of thunder rent through the building with such force that loose items throughout the main room clattered where they sat.

The lights went out completely.

Emergency lights along the walls illuminated, casting Dahlia’s caramel skin in an unearthly glow as Grace stared at her in barely subdued panic. The others in the room began to mumble to each other, their voices rising in pitch. She felt her nails digging into the skin of her arms and realized she was hugging herself again.

A man in a lab coat raced into the main room, skidding around the door and barreling toward Dahlia as soon as he spotted her. “He’s waking!” he yelled at Jericho’s wife. “Come quickly.”

Dahlia took a quick step toward him, but then stumbled. She threw out an arm to catch herself against the wall. “
Shit
,” Grace heard her mutter.

Dahlia spun around and pinned Grace with a wide-eyed look. “Earthquake,” she told Grace in an odd, disbelieving tone. “Big one.”

Dahlia lunged forward and grabbed Grace by the arm, hauling her quickly to a nearby desk and shoving herself and Grace in the small area beneath it.

Shooting pains emanated from the skin Dahlia’s fingers touched. Grace hissed and tried to wrench her arm from Dahlia’s grip as she spluttered, “What — how do you — ”

“I can hear it coming,” she said impatiently. “Take cover!” she bellowed to all the gawkers.

No sooner had the words left her mouth than the first wave hit the building. A sound, louder than the eardrum-cracking clap of thunder, ricocheted through the room like a freight train, and Grace watched with wide eyes as the floor began to ripple at the edge of the room and move toward them like oncoming ocean waves.

And, even though paralyzed with fear, all Grace could think of was the scorching pain of Dahlia’s fingers where they still clutched her arm.

Screams began to echo as the men and women who worked at the facility realized what was happening. Feet thundered as everyone sought shelter.

But Grace scrambled away from Dahlia and out into the open as soon as the woman’s grip on Grace’s arm slackened.

Dahlia’s arm snaked out and captured the back of Grace’s jacket. “What the
hell
?”

“Don’t
touch me
!” Grace shrieked so loudly that Dahlia drew back in shock.

A huge chunk of plaster fell from the ceiling to land right beside Grace. A cloud of white exploded from its impact and dusted both of them. Desks began to skitter across the floor.

“Do you want to die?” Dahlia yelled, blinking the white powder from her lashes.

Die or be touched? No contest. Grace didn’t move.

The earthquake gained in intensity. The glass that made up the ceiling of the dome tinkled and Grace looked up as a crack spider-webbed from one end of the dome to the other.

“Okay,” Dahlia said fast and low. “I won’t touch you. Just get your ass under here right now!”

Grace dragged her eyes from the ceiling to look into the dim space beneath the desk. Dahlia pressed herself against the side, leaving more than enough room for Grace to fit without having to be against the other woman. And still she hesitated.

Across the dome, bookshelves began to fall like dominoes, each one hitting the ground with a resounding boom. The tinkling of the glass ceiling increased and one or two shards escaped and plummeted toward the ground.

With a deep breath for courage, Grace dove into the area beside Dahlia just as the ceiling gave way.

The glass chimed like clock-tower bells as it fell. It tinkled off of every surface and bounced from the floor in glittering arcs. Grace watched in horror as a huge shard caught one of the soldiers as he tried to dive under a desk a few feet away. His scream cut off as the glass sliced through his chest and pinned him to the floor right where Grace had been kneeling seconds before.

Grace huddled into the corner and buried her face against the wood of the desk so hard she thought her nose might break.

The waves of the ground moved as though alive beneath Grace, hitting her in the shins and knees again and again as she knelt and causing her stomach to lurch as though seasick. Beside her, she heard Dahlia begin to recite the rosary in Spanish in a low, breathless voice. As a backdrop, the glass on the floor clacked and pinged as the entire building shimmied with the rage of the earth.

And in the next heartbeat, everything stopped.

Grace’s frantic breaths in the sudden absence of sound were excruciatingly loud, but the silence didn’t last for long. Moans from the wounded began to fill the air.

She heard her boss, Eli Johnson, bellowing his past-due pregnant wife’s name as he barreled through the dome from his office and toward the medical wing.

“Jericho,” Dahlia breathed next to her. Then she scrambled from her hiding spot, sliding in the blood that slicked across the floor from the impaled man before gaining purchase and sprinting in Eli’s wake.

Grace stared dumbfounded at the glassy eyes of the dead man in front of her before forcing herself to emerge from the desk.

Utter destruction waited for her. Her eyes skimmed over the demolished main room of the facility. Everything was … gone. Desks were smashed. Books were flung to every wall of the room. The glass on the floor glittered like diamonds among the pools of blood. It looked like after-pictures of a tornado.

But the trees stood resolute in the center of the room. Not one fruit had fallen from their branches. And on the desk beneath them, where Grace did her work, the sword glowed. The sword, usually covered with flickering green and gold flames, was now …
angry
. It was the only word she could use to describe what she was seeing. The green and gold flames had morphed into red and black. The metal, engraved with the words she had translated to say
what the tree gives, the sword takes; what the sword takes, the tree gives
was now pulsing with emotion. And coming off of the sword in waves was an otherworldly
heat
. The sword had always emitted a cool indifference. Now it was raging.

“Oh, God,” Grace gasped. Her breathing sped up even more, and black began to edge in on her vision.

Something had angered this inanimate object. Fear, so familiar and yet, in this case, so different, choked Grace’s throat. She had a gut feeling that in completing her job she betrayed a secret. The sword’s secret.

Someone was coming. Coming for them. Coming for her.

She had one thought before losing consciousness:
What have I done?

To purchase this ebook and learn more about the author, click
here
.

Micah Persell is also the author of
Emma: The Wild and Wanton Edition
,
Of the Knowledge of Good and Evil
, and
Of Eternal Life

In the mood for more Crimson Romance?

Check out
Daisy Miller: The Wild and Wanton Edition
by Gabrielle Vigot and Henry James
at
CrimsonRomance.com
.