The Sun Dwellers (33 page)

The gun, now aimed at the head of President Nailin, just a few feet away. Too close to miss.

“Stop this or you die,” she repeats.

“No, Roc, no!” Tristan yells from below.

I want to turn to see what’s happening, but my eyes are transfixed on my nonviolent friend with the gun, a steely determination in her eyes that makes me think she might actually follow through with her death threat. A new Tawni.

“It’s already over,” the President says, smiling down the barrel of the gun.

Tristan’s cries rise up again. “Help me! Someone!” he screams.

I finally turn away from my friend, see the carnage in the arena. What the hell? Did Tristan stab Roc? Distracted by Tawni’s little surprise, I didn’t see what happened, but now Roc has a sword in his stomach, and Tristan’s kneeling over him, looking up at us, pleading with his torn expression and words. “Please! Someone help me! He’s dying!”

My heart beating wildly, I swing back to Tawni.
Do it!
I say with my eyes, not wanting to give her a verbal command for fear that the advance warning will give the President and his guards a chance to make a move.

Tawni’s nod is almost imperceptible, more like a twitch; her finger tightens on the trigger; she closes her eyes.

Boom!
The gun explodes through my ears and flashes across my vision, but the President was already moving, sensing the attack, diving for the floor. A cry of pain erupts from the seats behind him—one of the guards most likely.

President Nailin rises up, reaches for Tawni, whose eyes are wide, her mouth agape. She bobbles the gun, her fingers turning to jelly, and Nailin manages to swipe at the weapon, knocking it back and between his outstretched legs. It clatters past the guard sitting between us and settles at my feet.

The guard lunges and I know this is it. The moment. The reason my mother sent me on this mission. Because she thought I was the one who could do it.

I sweep my still tied together feet upward, kicking the diving guard in the head. The guy to my right tries to grab me, but I thrust my knees as high up as they’ll go, catching him hard under the chin, hearing an awful cracking sound and a roar of anguish. There are yells and screams and voices shouting indecipherable things from behind me and in the pit—Tristan’s voice is louder than them all—and from the President, but I block them out, concentrate on one thing: getting my hands free.

As I pull with all my strength, the ropes rip my skin to ribbons, bite my wrists, send searing pain and shock through my whole body in a series of tremors. “Arrrr!” I yell, trying to relieve the agony through my vocal chords. Whoever tied my ropes did a better job than Tawni’s because they won’t give, won’t break, won’t untie.

The presence of those who are seeking to stop me is all around, pressing and scrabbling and distorting the air—I have no time to fight at my bonds any longer. Raising my tethered hands high over my back, I strain to get them over my head. I scream again, feeling my joints and muscles and tendons and whatever else is hidden beneath my skin, stretching and contorting and trying to move in such a way that should not be possible. Then I feel it: a massive pop in my left shoulder; splinters of pressure, sharp and brutal, running down my arm; my hands in front of me, still together, but
in front of me!
My left arm dangles unnaturally, but my right is still strong, still ready.

The pain is nothing. My friends are dying, so the pain is nothing.

I grab the gun off the floor, feeling clawed fingers scratching at me from behind, lift it up, whirl to face the man who—by his orders—killed Cole, killed my father, killed Trevor, maimed my sister, who is the object of my mission, of my revenge. Perhaps the fulfillment of my entire purpose for being born into the hell that is the Tri-Realms.

Even now, his face is unrepentant, a grizzled collection of black eyes, stretched and wrinkled skin, and bared teeth. Death and the Devil combined in human form.

“You don’t have the guts!” he spits out, his lips gnarled and red.

I don’t respond. Words are meaningless now; action is everything.

Death—meet death. I fire, seeing a coin of red appear on his forehead instantaneously, drizzling down his gnarled face in an understated trickle of blood.

He falls back.

Tristan

Roc’s dying and I’m pleading to those who will never listen. Something’s happening in the stands but I can’t understand it through my clouded vision and blubbering lips. A commotion of some sort. Tawni standing up, pointing at my father. A noise, loud, but not as loud as the beat of my heart. My father striking Tawni. A scuffle of some sort. Adele screaming, an awful keening that seems to shatter my heart into a thousand fragments, which roll around in my chest, scratching and tearing me apart from the inside.

Her screaming stops and now she’s standing, pointing at my father. Another loud noise and my father falls back, narrowly missing Tawni.
Can someone tell me what’s going on? Can someone help me?
I try to yell, but nothing comes out, my voice box rendered useless by some unseen force.

There are more loud bangs from Adele’s fingers, which are almost shimmering in the light. A few guards drop to the ground. A gun; she’s got a gun. She shot my father. She’s shooting his guards. Bending down, she picks up something else: another gun, dropped by one of the dead guards. She shoots again and again until everyone in red has fallen. All dead.

I manage another yell, nothing more than a cry of the pain in my chest.

Roc speaks, his voice weak, just a low rasp. “You’ll always be my brother,” he says.

His eyes close.

Adele

A
fter they all die I finally feel the throb of pain in my shoulder, so strong I nearly pass out. But then I hear Tristan’s scream and I will my body to soldier on. I drop into my seat, my hand scrabbling at the nearest dead guard’s belt, finding a knife, and although it’s difficult with only one hand, cutting my bonds from my hands and feet. Down the aisle Tawni’s doing the same with the ropes around her ankles.

We should both be in shock, but perhaps everything we’ve seen has been so shocking that our bodies don’t even know enough to start shutting down. For whatever reason, I’m able to tuck my injured arm across my belly, pick up a gun with my right arm, and move down the aisle, stepping over bodies—over the President’s body—and usher Tawni to the steps.

We take them two at a time to the bottom and Tawni pushes through the gate, immediately sprinting across the floor. I try to run, but the pain is too much and I start seeing stars, so I drop back into a more reasonable stride.

When I reach Tristan and Tawni and Roc—poor, poor broken Roc—Tawni’s taking charge. Tristan’s hysterical. “He’s dead. He’s dead. My fault. All my fault,” he wails, sobbing and choking and gasping.

“Take him,” Tawni says to me gently.

I lay down the gun, kneel, put my good arm around Tristan’s shoulders, and pull his grief-wracked form into my chest. “Shhh. Let Tawni check him out. She knows what she’s doing. Remember? Shhh.”

He continues sobbing as Tawni hovers over Roc. Half a sword blade and the hilt are still sticking from his stomach. There’s blood around the blade’s entrance, but not as much as I’d expect from such a horrific wound. Roc’s eyes are closed, like he’s only sleeping, his chest doesn’t appear to rise and fall, so I expect the worst when Tawni places two fingers on his neck, feeling for a pulse.

I want to join Tristan, cry my eyes out, but I know he needs me to be strong now. Tawni is somehow holding it together, although it’s her boyfriend who’s lying there, possibly dead. If the roles were reversed and it was Tristan instead of Roc, I’d be a mess, inconsolable. But Tawni just goes about her business, professionally searching for a pulse, her ear near Roc’s closed lips, perhaps hoping to feel an exhalation from his nose on her skin.

“He has a pulse, but it’s weak,” she says. “And he’s breathing.” Her words should give me some comfort, but when she turns back to me, the look on her face paints a different story. “But he is dying. He needs medical help, right now.”

Tristan jerks, his head lifting from my chest, his sobbing ending abruptly. “He’s alive?” he says, the last of his tears dripping from his chin.

“Barely. Can you guys carry him?”

There’s a light in Tristan’s eyes that I thought had gone out for good. “Yes, yes, of course. But shouldn’t we remove the sword?”

“No!” Tawni cries. “That’s the only thing preventing a significant loss of blood. It might be the only thing keeping him alive.”

Strange how the instrument that caused his injuries might now be saving his life.

“Okay. Let’s go.” Tristan slides his hands under Roc’s armpits from behind, props him up.

“Gently. Gently,” Tawni says.

I grab his feet with my good arm, leaving the other one hanging limply at my side. “One, two, three,” I say and then we lift. He’s heavier than I expected, and I almost drop him, but Tawni rushes to help, placing two arms underneath his back.

“Are you okay?” Tristan asks sharply, as if he’s only now noticing my injured shoulder.

“I think it’s dislocated,” I say, “but I can handle it.”

Tristan nods, doesn’t question my statement. He knows now’s not a time to pamper his girlfriend. His friend’s life is on the line.

“Where are we going?” Tawni asks.

“The infirmary,” Tristan says. “There will still be at least one doctor on call, even during the celebration. You know, for drunks who fall down and get hurt.”

“What about the guards?” I ask.

“You killed them all.”

I take a short breath when I hear the truth in his tone. “I know I killed these ones, but what about others?”

“We killed a few earlier, and I don’t expect there are many others. My father saved them all for the ambush.”

I killed all the guards
. The thought gives me a gruesome sense of pride mixed with a sick dread at what I’ve done.

Struggling under the load, we move swiftly through the gate and start up the stairs. I lead, while Tawni and Tristan push from behind. It’s like carrying…well, it’s like carrying a dead body, to be honest—difficult and cumbersome. I try to push the thought out of my mind.

We reach the top and pass through the exit, using our legs to keep the door from whacking Roc. I move as fast as I can down the hall, the others matching my speed. When we reach an intersection, Tristan says, “Left.”

We maneuver around the bend and continue our harried pace. “Here, here,” Tristan says. “Through the doors on your right.”

I push through the doors back first, twisting my head to look over my shoulder as I enter a stark white room with bright fluorescent lights running along the ceiling.

“Who are you?” a voice says from behind me.

Pushing into the room, Tristan says, “I am Tristan Nailin, son of the now dead president of the Tri-Realms. We have a patient who needs your help.”

Without waiting for permission, I lay Roc’s feet on a bed on wheels that stands in the center of the room. Tawni and Tristan rotate the rest of him around until he’s securely on the mattress. The doctor is gawking at us.

“Tristan? Why yes, of course it’s you! Did you say
now dead president
?” the balding, spectacled man says.

“There’s no time for any of that,” Tristan says. “I order you to save this man’s life.”

“But he’s a servant. Surely you can take him to a regular hospit—”

“Now!” Tristan roars, rising up to his full height.

“Well, of course, I suppose I could make an exception,” the doctor says, hurrying to Roc’s side. “This does not look good. Not good at all.”

“He’s still breathing and has a weak pulse,” Tawni says helpfully.

“That’s good, but they might not last. We need to put him on life support immediately.”

“Do it, Doctor,” Tristan says. “Whatever it takes.”

“Give me space, please,” the man says, shooing us to the side like animals or small children.

The doctor goes about his business, wheeling various machines around Roc, fitting a plastic mask over his mouth, strapping something to his chest, just above his heart. The sword continues to protrude from his belly like a piece of grotesque abstract art meant to shock its viewers.

Next the man injects a yellowish fluid in Roc’s right arm, and then something pink in the other one. We’re all staring, watching things unfold like a play, or live telebox. At some point Tristan grabs my hand, clutching it like it’s the only thing keeping him sane, like if I let it go he’ll spontaneously combust. His squeezing gets harder and harder until my hand starts to hurt.

“Tristan,” I say, “it’s going to be okay.”

He looks at me, his eyes misty again. “Is it?” he says. “I’m sorry, that’s more than I can hope for right now.”

Is it just Roc that’s bothering him? Or is it that I—

“Tristan, I’m sorry I killed your father. I know that was the whole point of all of this, but I’ll understand if you never forgive me.”