The Gathering (5 page)

Cap puts his hand on my arm.

He’s arrived and crouches beside me with his finger held up to his lips. Sticks has arrived too. All of us squat beneath Clive’s cloak.

I motion toward Luka. I want to shout, “Now!” I want to race ahead, fight off the solitary guard, grab Luka, and startle awake so all of this can be over. But Cap’s grip tightens on my arm, his attention sliding from one corner of the chamber to the other. When he’s finished with his inspection, he waves for us to follow him around the crates, out into the open. Clive’s cloak is strong and bright. There are no holes or thin spots like Anna’s.

Luka stirs on the floor.

Clive’s cloak broadens and spreads, allowing us to move apart, to surround Luka and the guard on all sides.

Luka stirs again.

The guard shifts.

All of us stop.

And suddenly, out of nowhere, Scarface appears. He stands in front of Luka, his hands clasped behind his back, his head slightly cocked, as though listening for a pin to drop. “Is that you, Little Rabbit?”

I hold my breath. He can’t see me. There’s no way. Not inside Clive’s cloak. But my heart thunders so loudly it drowns out the
plink-plink
of dripping water. So loudly that maybe he can hear me.

Luka sets his hands on the ground and tries to push himself up.

A Grinch-like smile pulls up the corners of the man’s lips, turning his white scars into the shape of crescent moons. “I
knew
you would come. Didn’t I know she would come, Mr. Williams? Isn’t love so ridiculously irrational?”

“Please, Tess,” Luka begs. “Startle.”

“Oh no, Tess! Please, don’t startle. Come closer instead and give Mr. Williams the kiss he’s been fancying. The kiss he can’t stop thinking about.” Scarface claps his hands together and laughs. A cackle so delighted and amused it raises every hair on my body. “Your dear lover is a parched man and your lips are like water. Won’t you come closer and let him drink?”

Luka’s shoulder muscles tremble as he pushes himself a little higher. “No, Tess.”

“
Yes, Tess.
Now is your chance. There’s only two of us.” Scarface lifts his hand to himself and the guard. “Surely a powerful Fighter like you can handle the two of us.”

Blood pounds in my ears. I move to take a step, but Cap raises his hand in a sharp, attention-getting motion. His steely eyes command me to wait. To be smarter.

“No kiss for Mr. Williams? Pity. And here I was hoping to watch the romantic reunion.” He shrugs, like it’s my loss. “Tell me, how
is
everyone? Good? Are you sure? It’s hard to know who to trust these days, don’t you think?”

He’s baiting me with Claire, but it won’t work. I never trusted her to begin with.

The four of us begin moving forward again. Clive stays behind, his cloak extending along with us as we close in.

“Lucky for me, you’re not the only one trying to reunite with a dear loved one.” Scarface’s eyes glitter, and then narrow into calculated slits. “You know the deal.”

The words have me stutter stepping.

What deal?

“I’m sorry. I don’t have a choice.”

The hollow voice comes from behind me. I turn around and watch in horror as Clive takes a step back and drops his cloak. The darkened chamber fills with white-eyed guards. Twenty at least. And we are completely visible. One hundred percent exposed.

With his eyes never leaving mine, black mist curls from Scarface’s fingertips. He aims it at Luka, but it doesn’t wrap around him this time. It seeps inside of him. He arches up violently, almost completely off the ground, and screams. His body bends like I’ve never seen a body bend. Like his spine has snapped in two.

No!
I run toward him, anger and hatred morphing into pure adrenaline. It courses through my veins as I take four guards out at once. In the periphery of my vision, Cap and Sticks fight off three at a time. Gabe throws a shield that scatters five. Luka continues to twist and scream as more guards appear. Like Shady Wood, they come out of nowhere, filling the entire chamber.

Sticks falls and black mist binds him.

No.

I do a running kick that throws two against the wall.

Six surround Cap and take him down.

No!

Fury propels me forward as Scarface drops back like a coward, flashes me a sickening smile, and disappears. Luka falls to the ground. I punch and kick and strike. But there are too many. We’re going to lose. There’s no way we can win. No hope of victory. All I want now is to reach Luka one last time. Touch him one last time. I strike one of the guards with the heel of my palm. Sweep the legs of another.

“Tess!” Gabe yells.

Our attention collides and holds through the chaos. His lips pull into a thin, resolved line. And then he throws another shield, bright and blinding. Only he doesn’t throw it at our enemy. He throws it at me. It barrels forward like a rolling wave of billowing heat.

I don’t have time to understand. I don’t have time to process. All I can do is brace for the impact. But no amount of bracing can prepare me for what happens next.

The shield does not slam against me. It slams inside of me. Like an atomic bomb of explosive power, so hot and so big I will rupture into a million fragmented pieces if it remains. On instinct, my body convulses and I hurl the power out.

There’s a brilliant flash of light. So piercing, so overwhelming, there’s nothing but white. It charges through the chamber with a sonic boom, engulfing everything in its path. And when it’s gone, so is the enemy. None remain. Cap and Sticks are no longer bound.

I don’t wait around to see what will happen next.

I sprint forward and dive at Luka’s crumpled body. I grab onto his neck and scream at everyone to startle.

An Eternity

I
sit up straight in the chair. I don’t wait for anyone else to come to consciousness. I rip the probes off my chest and my temple. I fling open the door and tear down the hallway. I don’t stop until I reach the antechamber that leads to the boys’ corridor.

There’s nothing but dark and silence.

My heart booms great giant beats that throb against my eardrums. I have a whole new understanding of the phrase—
frozen in fear
. Because that’s me. I want to sprint ahead, and I want to sprint away. But I can’t do either. I can do nothing but stand with trembling knees, wondering why the hallway is still dark. Why isn’t Luka coming out of his room? Fear terrorizes me. So does Cap’s warning.

There are bound to be ramifications.

I can see it—the black mist oozing inside of him. Luka’s body snapping. Were we too late? Scarface thought he had me. So why wouldn’t he destroy him? The bait had served its purpose. My booming heart booms harder.

And then …

A latch clicks.

The door to Luka’s room slowly opens. He steps into the hallway. Luka, his dark hair sticking up in every direction. Luka, awake. Luka, alive.

His eyes meet mine.

I stand there, unable to move. Unable to breathe.

He takes a step toward me, then sets his hand against the wall, as if he needs the support. The invisible chains of fear holding me in place fall away. I run and throw myself into his arms. He lets out a soft
oomph
as I collide against his chest. His arms slide around my waist. Mine wrap around his neck. He’s okay. Luka’s okay. I hold on tight, repeating the two words over and over and over again.
Luka’s okay. Luka’s okay.
I can’t get over them. I will never get over them.

“You could have been killed.” His lips are hot against my ear. A few days worth of scruff scratch against my skin. “If I were a better Keeper, I’d be livid.”

My entire body thrums to life.

His hands span the width of my ribcage, and in a moment of total relief and passion, he pushes me against the wall and crushes my lips with his. I’m pinned in the best possible way. I can’t get enough of him. I will never, ever be able to get enough of him.

“I thought I lost you,” I murmur between kisses.

“Only for awhile.”

“It felt like an eternity.”

Luka slides his fingers into my hair and presses his forehead against mine—his eyes as intense as the raging sea. He kisses me again, so achingly soft I melt against him. I want to stay here forever, kissing Luka. I don’t want to move forward, into the unknown. I definitely don’t want to move back, into the hell that was yesterday. But fragmented bits of information intrude on my euphoria, sneaking into the crevices of my mind like pesky rodents.

Clive, apologizing.

Clive, dropping the cloak.

We risked everything to rescue him from Shady Wood. He was inside Leela’s car. We invited him into the hub. He acted like he was on our side. I
trusted
him. I
thanked
him. And then he handed us over to the enemy on a silver platter.

Heat licks up my chest. Because of him, Non almost became a widow. The hub almost lost its leader. Jillian and Link and Rosie and all the rest would have been left to deal with the fallout. All of it would have happened, too, if not for Gabe and the mysterious shield he threw at me. What
was
that? And why are Luka and I still alone? Doesn’t anyone care that we succeeded? That Luka’s back and well with no ramifications that I can see?

“I don’t understand what happened,” I say.

“Neither do I.”

Footsteps approach.

Luka and I step apart.

Jillian walks toward us, her mousy brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, her clothes as worn and faded as everyone else’s. She gives Luka a wobbly smile. “It’s good to see you up.”

He pushes his fingers through his hair. “It’s good to be up.”

She bites her lip.

A cold feeling slinks between my shoulder blades. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s Gabe.” Tears pool in her eyes. “He’s dead.”

The Devouring

I
’m no stranger to death.

I saw it claim a doctor and a nurse outside a fetal modification clinic in a fiery explosion. I watched it persuade a desperate man to stick the barrel of a gun inside his mouth and pull the trigger. I couldn’t stop it from claiming a catatonic woman behind a steering wheel as fumes of exhaust gathered in her garage. I witnessed its merciless appetite as it threw up a carnage of bodies on a stretch of California highway.

But in the light of day, with my skin burning beneath scratching fingers, death is an entirely different beast. In the light of day, I’ve only stared it in the face twice. First with Dr. Roth, hanging from a noose at the end of his hallway. Now Gabe, lying in a chair inside the training room. His eyes are closed. His frozen lips slightly upturned, as if he welcomed death like an old friend. Link told me once that when Gabe’s
anima
died, Gabe died in a way, too. Now he’s dead in every way. I don’t understand how.

Jillian sniffs. “I was watching the monitors when his vitals flatlined. There was no warning or anything. One second he was fine, and the next …”

With glazed-over eyes, Luka stares down at Gabe’s still form.

“What’s going to happen to him?” My question escapes without inflection. Today has encompassed too many emotions. The effect has left me wrung dry. I know I should feel sad about this loss,
responsible
for this loss, but all I feel apart from numbness is relief that the one lying dead in the hub is not Luka.

“I don’t know.” Jillian’s lip trembles. “Maybe if Link had been in charge instead of me, he would have noticed something. Maybe Gabe wouldn’t be dead.”

I squeeze Jillian’s hand. “This is not your fault.”

She wipes her eyes. “After you left, Cap yelled at Sticks and Jose to grab Clive and then he ordered all of us out.”

A slow-rising anger works its way through the numbness. After everything we did for him, after everything we risked for him—
how could he?
“Do you know where they took him?”

“The conference room.”

I march into the hallway, leaving Jillian and Luka behind. I pass the greenhouse, where Anna hums softly to herself. I don’t stop until I reach the end of the adult dormitory corridor. A thin strip of light shines beneath the closed door of the makeshift conference room. Before I can knock, the door flies open and Cap rolls out, his gray stubble scruffier than I’ve ever seen. Deep lines bracket his eyes as he looks past me. “Where’s Luka?”

“With Gabe.” Who’s dead somehow. “What happened to him? Why did he die?”

“
Kataphagon
.”

“What?”

Cap rubs his scraggly cheeks, then pulls his face long with a sigh. “
Kataphagon
. It’s a Hebrew word that means
the devouring
. The contemporary name for it is transurgence.”

I shift my weight from one leg to the other, ready for him to finish his mini lesson in etymology and move on to the information I want—why did
Kataphagon
kill Gabe? And why does the strange word make my skin prickle with foreboding?

“That wasn’t a shield Gabe threw. It was his life. It’s something only Keepers can do.”

My foreboding turns to dread. It sinks like an icy rock into the pit of my stomach.

“Once the Fighter absorbs it, their power is magnified. How much depends on the strength of the Keeper.”

As if remembering the sensation, the tendons in my fingers flex. It was like a thousand suns had entered my body. As soon as I threw it out, it devoured the guards. It devoured Gabe, too. “Did Gabe know he would die?”

“Yes.”

My mouth turns acidic. “So he basically committed suicide.”

“
Mori est Vivire
. To die is to live. He didn’t take his life, Tess. He gave it. And because of that, you’re here. Because of that, Luka is here. To a Keeper, it’s the most honorable way to go.”

I press my lips together to keep my rolling stomach from staging a revolt. Did Gabe teach Luka about transurgence? I push the question away, scrambling about for something else to focus on. I just got Luka back. I can’t think about losing him again. “The man with the scars said there were other ways of getting to me. I thought he was talking about Claire. But He was talking about Clive, wasn’t he?”