The Decaying Empire (The Vanishing Girl Series Book 2) (32 page)

CHAPTER 21

G
un.

I blinked, taking in the slender arm wielding it before my gaze traveled up to Desiree’s face. Her eyes met mine. For a moment I saw her shock, and then she shuttered her expression.

“Look who fell right into my lap,” Desiree said. The barrel of the gun swung toward me.

“No.” Caden stepped in front of me. “This is between the two of us. Not her.”

What had I dropped into the middle of? And why had Desiree been pointing the gun at Caden, of all people?

“Right. Because you were so interested in escape before she came along,” Desiree said.

I tried to step around Caden, but he wasn’t budging.

Backing up to her desk, Desiree grabbed a radio that rested next to her laptop. “Captain,” she said, bringing the piece up to her mouth, “I have both Ember and Caden in my room.”

The radio crackled.
“Good.”
Dane’s static-y voice came over the radio, and Desiree’s eyes flicked away from us.

My breath caught in my throat as Caden’s muscles tensed. I knew a split second before he rushed Desiree that he was going to do so. It was what I would’ve done if our roles had been reversed; this was as distracted as Desiree was likely to be.

Caden moved fast. One moment he stood in front of me, and the next he gripped Desiree’s wrist, yanking it—

The gunshot shattered the silence, and the world seemed to stop. I couldn’t make sense of what I was seeing because Caden, my ruthless, unstoppable pair, clutched his abdomen.

Choking, I was choking on air.

Blood welled from the wound, and with his eyes wide, Caden glanced down at it, then back up at Desiree. Disbelief of the betrayal clouded his expression.

And then there seemed to be too much air in my lungs, too much of everything—and I could sense the tears sliding down my face and see the blurry world through them, but I couldn’t feel their wetness.

Now I knew how it felt. Now I could begin to fathom the horror of death.

And I knew in that moment it was by far easier to be the one who died than to be the one who lived on.

Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.

Desiree took a step back, dropping the gun as she did so. For a fleeting moment, I saw her horror. There’d be no coming back from an action like that, and she knew it. Anyone who was capable of killing their own friend knew they were a monster.

Caden swayed and I ran to him, catching him as his body tipped back. Together we crumpled to the ground. Red rivulets ran between Caden’s fingers.

A whimper escaped me and my hand covered Caden’s. I no longer cared that Dane would close in on us in minutes, or that Desiree could pick up the gun again and shoot me. In fact, that would be the kind thing to do.

My world wasn’t a kind place.

Rather than grabbing the weapon and finishing the job, Desiree backed away from us until she reached the door. Her eyes never wavered from Caden. She grabbed the handle and slipped out the door, fleeing from the carnage.

I shuddered as I looked down at Caden.

He laced his blood-soaked fingers through mine, and our gazes locked. “No more fear, Ember,” he said, throwing my earlier words back at me.

And then he disappeared.

“No!”
A part of me was breaking, splintering in a thousand different ways.

I hunched over the empty space where Caden had been, my entire body quaking.

Spliced
. The word echoed in my head. At this very moment, Caden was bleeding out in a random hotel room. There’d be no medical team on standby to save him. I put the back of my hand to my mouth. By the time I woke up, he’d be long dead.

Thump. Thump. Thump.
My heart beat in my ears.

He’d be
dead.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

This was the second time Desiree had torn us apart.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Rage eclipsed grief. It coursed through me, too large to be contained within a single body. It felt like a force of nature.

I pushed myself to my feet. I saw the room around me through a tunnel of darkness painted in shades of red. When I found myself down the hall, it felt as though I had floated there.

Two soldiers in fatigues appeared in the hallway. Their faces registered surprise when they saw me. Quickly they scrambled for their weapons.

Not fast enough. I strode toward them, closing the distance between us, and tore a gun from one of the soldier’s grips. I then slammed my palm into his nose, and he stumbled back, instinctively reaching for his face. Before he could recover, I brought my leg up and smashed my foot into his face. His eyes rolled back and he fell. I shifted my attention to the second soldier, just as the man raised his weapon. Lightning quick I spun, landing a roundhouse kick to his temple. His legs buckled underneath him, and he collapsed on top of his partner.

I’d have my vengeance before I died.

Still holding one of the soldier’s guns, I continued down the hall. Desiree would either run to Dane, or she’d flee somewhere private to lick her emotional wounds.

I turned toward Dane’s office. Didn’t matter if she wasn’t there. Chances were good that someone I didn’t like would be there.

Caden’s dead.

A tear escaped my eyes. And then another and another.

I couldn’t save him, but I’d get my revenge. That was the last thought I processed before I disappeared.

CHAPTER 22

I
woke up with a gasp. I’d just escaped a nightmare, only this one was real.

“Caden.”
I sobbed his name.

Arms encircled me. “Shhh, angel. It’s okay.” He buried his face in the crook of my neck.

Wait.

This couldn’t be right.

I drew back. The bathroom light of our hotel space was on, and in its dim glow I could see Caden. Alive.

I scrambled out of his arms and clicked on a bedside lamp to get a better look at him. Golden light illuminated his naked torso. My eyes fell to his abdomen. Bloodstained strips of what used to be a shirt covered the wound.

I squinted, staring more closely at it. My eyes widened. “Holy . . .” I glanced up at him. “The wound didn’t splice.”

His brows tilted. “No,” he said quietly.

I reached out, drawing back at the last minute. “We still need to get you to a doctor.”

“We don’t have time for that.”

I pushed off the bed and grabbed the phone. “We’re getting you to a hospital,” I said. Hearing the steel in my voice, Caden backed off.

He didn’t splice.
He didn’t splice.
As I held the phone to my ear, I began to giggle. Caden eyed me warily, especially when the giggles built on themselves until I was laughing hysterically. I covered my mouth with my hand. It was the same hand that only a minute ago had been covered with Caden’s blood.

A laugh caught in my throat, and suddenly gut-wrenching sobs shook my body.
Caden’s arms came back around me. “Angel, I’m okay,” he said soothingly.

“I thought you
died
,” I said, a shaky finger pressing the button for the front desk.

“I’m fairly hard to kill.”

Another choked sob tore out of me.

In response Caden pressed a kiss to my shoulder blade.

On the other end of the line, the hotel receptionist clicked on. I pulled myself together. I’d have time to cry once Caden was properly cared for.

“Necesito una ambulancia,”
I said, clearing my throat.

As I arranged for an ambulance, a teleporter appeared—here no doubt to take me out. Before the guy could so much as take a step toward me, Caden was on him.

He grabbed the back of the teleporter’s head and slammed it against a nearby table, hard enough for me to know that Caden didn’t much care whether the guy lived or died.

Eyes wide, I quickly finished the call and hung up.

“Not that this is going to come as any surprise to you, but we need to go,” Caden said, grabbing our things. His gaze flicked over me. “And as much as I like the view, you might want to put some clothes on.”

I nodded, my gaze dropping to the fresh blood that had seeped through his bandages. He might not splice—and the injury might’ve already partially healed—but it was still a severe wound.

I shoved on my clothes and grabbed my bag. We wouldn’t be coming back.

“We made it to Mexico.” I pressed the phone against my ear, my voice pitched low. I glanced down the hall. Behind one of the closed doors, doctors worked on Caden.

“And you’re okay?” Adrian asked. I could practically see his brow wrinkling with concern at my tone.

I sighed. “I’m fine, Caden”—I swallowed down the lump in my throat. “He was shot,” I said, my voice hoarse. I rubbed my eyes.

“Is he all right?”

I frowned at Adrian’s tone. He didn’t sound overly concerned. Not that I expected him to, but his coolness rubbed me the wrong way.

“He didn’t splice.”

Silence on the other end. Heavy silence.
Meaningful
silence.

“You know why he didn’t splice, don’t you?”

After a pause Adrian spoke. “You weren’t the only teleporter my father experimented on.”

My breath caught in my throat. “Come again?”

“Like any good scientist, my father made slight deviations, some more successful than others.”

Goose bumps broke out on my flesh. “You talk about this as though we were experiments.”

“In the beginning that’s what you were.” Hearing those words from Adrian made my stomach roil, no matter how true they were.

I couldn’t talk to him about this. If I did, the encounter would probably end in much the same way our last visit had.

I blew a stray strand of hair off my forehead and closed my eyes. “So Caden doesn’t splice
. . .
ever?”

“To my knowledge, no, he doesn’t.”

I slipped into Caden’s room when no one was looking. Even injured, he seemed larger than life, his wide shoulders and long legs dwarfing the hospital bed.

His eyes were closed, and I used the opportunity to drink him in. My eyes meandered over his scarred, tan skin and lingered on his achingly beautiful face. They moved up to his hair. I took in the shimmering strands of his golden hair. He was a child of the sun.

His eyes fluttered open. “Hey, angel,” he said, his voice thick with sleep. He patted the bed, and I went over to him.

When I didn’t climb into the bed, he wrapped an arm around my waist and hauled me up to him.

Well, that was one way of getting what you wanted.

I reached out and traced his features. “I worried about you.”

After we’d taken off from the hotel, I figured we wouldn’t be seeing any more teleporters. Not until the government knew where we were. I’d made sure to use different identities for Caden and me when he’d checked into the hospital. Right now I was Sarah Ericsson, wife of Sam Ericsson. And Sam Ericsson was not-so-subtly groping my backside.

I grabbed his wandering hand and moved it to a more appropriate location.

He looked over at me, his eyelids droopy but his gaze full of awe. “Mother of my unborn children,” he mumbled, a slow smile spreading across his face.

“Uh
. . .
what?” The hospital must’ve put him on
strong
pain meds.

His hand descended down to my stomach, and he rubbed my belly. He was looking all wistful. “We’d be good parents.”

That was questionable. But I nodded anyway, entertaining drugged-up Caden. “The best.”

He laughed. “You’re a bad liar
. . .
for a teleporter, that is.” He settled back in his bed, snuggling me to him. “You want to know a secret, puss-puss?” He slurred his words a little.

My lips twitched. “I’m only letting that comment slide because you’re on painkillers.

He nodded. “I get temporary immunity, so I’m abusing it.”

Naturally.

“Angel.” He pulled me close so that his lips brushed my ear. “I knew I loved you from the first moment I laid eyes on you, when you waited for that bus to take you far, far away.”

I wrapped my arms lightly around him, careful not to jostle his injury. “Oh, did you now?” I said, my tone playful even though my heart hammered away in my chest.

“People don’t believe in those kinds of things—jaded bitches . . .” he muttered under his breath. His eyes focused on me. “What was I saying?”

It took a lot for me not to laugh. “Love at first sight?”

“Oh yes—yes it was. I saw you”—he poked his finger at the tip of my nose—“and I was ready to leave everyone and everything behind.”

The corner of his mouth drew up. “And then I met you.” His eyes softened. “I got my first taste that day of what conviction felt like.” He touched my hair. “Ember Elizabeth Pierce, so long as you’ll have me, I’m never letting you go.”

I stared at Caden as we took our seats on the transatlantic flight the next day. He wasn’t quite able to hide a wince as the movement jostled his bullet wound.

My gaze dropped to his torso. “This is a bad idea.” Being on an airplane for over ten hours had to seriously increase the possibility of infection.

“It is. You could teleport at any fucking moment.” Now that the painkillers had worn off, Caden was grumpy.

The passenger next to me peered at us.

“You would turn this on me,” I said, “when you’re the one with the hole in your abdomen.”

The man glanced over at us again. Caden scowled at him, and the man quickly turned away.

Caden grabbed my hand and squeezed it. “I’m going to be fine,” he said, reading my expression. “I’ve had worse, much, much worse.”

I didn’t want to even think about that.

“I’m still getting you to a doctor as soon as we land,” I said.

“What happened to ‘no more fear’?” Despite his words, Caden’s lips curled upward at my concern. I was having a minor freak-out next to him, and he looked pleased.

“We still have time. We could leave,” I said, having second thoughts.

Caden placed a hand against my chest. “No, angel. We need to finish this.”

I had no doubt that Dane and his men were doing all in their power right now to find us, but they no longer knew precisely where we were. They wouldn’t risk sending more teleporters until they did.

I worried my lower lip, then reluctantly nodded. We wouldn’t truly be safe until we reached that safe house in Zurich.

I settled back in my seat, all the muscles in my body tense.

Caden snickered. “Now you know how it feels.”

When I raised my eyebrows, he elaborated. “I almost had an aneurysm on the last flight, knowing that you could disappear at any moment.” After a pause he added, “I might still have one. You got enough sleep, right?”

I nodded. I’d fallen asleep in Caden’s arms on that hospital bed, and we’d slept together for hours. Sometime during that period a nurse had come in and, rather than prying me off Caden, she’d draped a blanket over me.

I glanced down at his arm. Thin white lines nicked his skin every so often. I reached out and traced them. “All your scars now make sense,” I murmured. My eyes flicked to him; he watched me. “You’ve known for a while that you couldn’t splice.”

He gave me a jerky nod.

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

He shrugged. “It never came up.”

My mouth sort of dropped open in disbelief. “So I’m expected to share my secrets, but you’re not?”

He caught my hand, brushing a kiss to the back of it. “You don’t get to be mad.”

“Oh really?”

“Yep. Because I’m injured. Also, I think I get free massages and unlimited booty calls.”

The man next to me sniggered, and I glared at him while he flipped through an in-flight magazine. Too bad he paid me no attention.

Turning my attention back to Caden, I said, “As soon as this is all behind us, you are so getting punished for that.”

Caden’s eyes lit up like those of a kid on Christmas. “I—cannot—wait.”