Daniel raises his fist, and I know whatever he is about to do will look like it’s attacking Thomas, but it’ll kill me. There’s no way Daniel is going to let me live now. Especially if he saved a few vials of what he thinks is the new vaccine.
And if he managed to protect himself, then he probably did.
“Run,” I whisper.
But I didn’t have to. Thomas is already fleeing, shoving people out of his way as he leaps up the stairs two at a time.
I expect something—the floor to collapse beneath us, the roof to suddenly lose its supports and rain down on us, but when I peek back, I see someone on top of Daniel taking care of him in the oldest human way—with his fists.
Someone blond.
Logan.
But there’s only that tiny second before the screams and crashing begin. A panicked crowd of humans can kill; I don’t want to know what a panicked crowd of gods can do.
I keep my eyes scrunched shut against tears, but it doesn’t take much imagination to picture the walls of the Curatoria prison falling away before Alanna’s destructive power.
The security doors shut some of the noise out, and I’m surrounded by voices, protests.
Then silence.
“Benson, take her. No questions. We have to get her out of here. To a hospital.”
I’m tossed roughly to Benson, and I shriek in pain, but as soon as I settle in his arms, I know I’m safe. Not what I once thought of as safe—protected from bodily harm—but safe in the knowledge that even if I die, I’m in the right place.
“She’s bleeding!” Benson says.
“Worse than that—she’s half-dead,” Thomas says, his voice farther away now.
“You’re going to help her, aren’t you?”
“I’m going to do my damndest.”
“Please, Dad—” Benson’s voice breaks off. “Show me how to save her. I’ll do anything.”
“Benson, I would lay down my own life for this girl of yours. I only gave her to you because I think you would too. Now run.”
“This way.” Alanna’s voice now. My eyes are scrunched closed. It’s all I can do to even stay conscious as I bounce around in Benson’s arms.
I’m trying.
Trying.
Logan. We left him. I don’t think Thomas even saw him.
I try to speak. To tell them to go back. But nothing in my body is obeying me. My eyes won’t stay open. It hurts to breathe.
They’re taking me in a small space. A tunnel, I think. “We made this about a year ago,” Thomas explains as they jog. I wonder if he’s talking to cover up the sounds behind us. Sounds of destruction I can’t bear to think very hard about, despite the rumbling of the earth beneath us. “Took ages to get around all the pipes and footings and crap that go into a structure this big.”
“What do we do when we get out?” Benson asks, his breath heavy from carrying me. I want to help, but I can’t.
Can’t.
“Making dune buggies is one of my specialties,” Thomas says, but now, with my eyes closed and listening closely, I can hear the fear and panic in his voice too. I remember how Benson used to get very quiet when he was afraid. My tired, weary brain finds it humorous that his father is the opposite.
“How long before we can get her to a hospital?”
Thomas doesn’t answer right away.
“We’ve never had reason to time it,” Alanna says softly. “But at least an hour, maybe two. Once we get going I’ll help you staunch the bleeding. It’s all we can do.”
“Hold on,” Benson whispers, and it takes me a second to realize he’s talking to me.
And that I was letting go.
How did he know?
Warm air hits my face, and I cling to consciousness as Benson slides into something that must be the thing Thomas talked about. Dune buggy?
“Hold her tight,” Thomas says. “This is not going to be a smooth ride.”
Benson’s arms tighten around me, and even though somewhere in my brain I know I’m dying, I feel safer. The weird vehicle bounces into action, and suddenly there is sand in my nose and I have to cough, but doing so sends spasms of pain through my abdomen and I can’t hold back a scream.
“Cover her mouth with this,” Alanna says, and cloth goes over my mouth and nose as my head lolls on Benson’s shoulder.
I force my eyes to open one more time to look behind us. The last thing I see as we speed away is the entire enormous glowing triangle collapsing into the desert sand and the bright stars twinkling against a black velvet sky.
FORTY-TWO
It was the first glowing triangle I saw. Nothing more, nothing less. Just simple chance. I ran from my Colorado home and jumped the first train I could get on. Then, every time it stopped, I would go walking, looking for glowing triangles. The symbol of a Curatoria safe house.
It took over three months.
I’m not proud of the things I did to stay alive during that time, but here I am, and technically, no one got hurt.
I don’t like going to the Curatoriates, not when I know about Daniel and Marianna. But if I’m careful, I can use their resources to help me find Quinn—whatever his name is now—before they figure out exactly who I am.
Then I’m gone.
But even having made the decision ages ago, I’m terrified to take those last few steps to the door tonight. Into the lion’s den, really. But I have to find my diligo if I want any chance of this all ending. Ending happily, I should say.
I should have told Quinn about Daniel and Marianna. I know that now. Trying to find each other without the brotherhoods is hard enough without one member of a pair not having any idea he needs to avoid them both.
If I could go back . . .
But I can’t. Maybe this house—these random Curatoriates—could be a step forward though. I lift a hand that feels like it weighs five hundred pounds and press the doorbell. I hear the chime peal beyond the thick door.
A minute passes. Two. Or maybe it’s only seconds; it’s impossible to tell. But finally the door opens and I’m standing before a tall man with regal, prematurely white hair, dressed in a three-piece suit. I’m glad it’s dusk so he probably can’t see the scuffs and stains on my shabby jeans.
“Can I help you?”
Dear gods, can I even say it? “My name is Sonya,” I start.
“Yes,” he prompts when I’m silent.
I peer up at him, channeling every ounce of courage I have within me. “Sum Terrobligatus.”
His eyes widen, but he covers it quickly. “I suppose so, if you can be quick about it,” he says just a touch too loud. “Come in.”
I resist the urge to glance in both directions before hurrying through the doorway. Because, really, what good would that do anyway?
I walk into a nice parlor that—though dim because no one has turned the lamps on yet—looks both elegant and comfortable.
“Please have a seat,” the man says, more anxious to please now that the front door is closed and locked with—I notice gratefully—two bolts plus a chain.
We sit in armchairs on opposite sides of a carved coffee table, and I’m trying to figure out which of us is supposed to speak first when I startle at a movement in the doorway.
The man’s eyes follow mine, and he smiles. “Don’t worry. This is my daughter, Samantha. She’s a Curatoriate as well. Young, but initiated.”
Sammi stands there, long blond hair curling around her shoulders, staring at me with excitement, but still that inner strength I always sensed in her later in her life. Even at seventeen years old, she has it.
And although I know this isn’t how the first meeting with Sammi and her father actually ended, I rise from my armchair and rush over and throw my arms around her, overjoyed to see her again, even though I know it’s only a dream.
Her arms lift an
d wrap around me, hugging me back, and for the first time in so very long, I feel at peace.
FORTY-THREE
I awake to the sound of a machine pinging out the beating of a heart. My heart, I assume. It’s so reminiscent of the way I awoke from the plane wreck that for a moment I wonder—really wonder—if everything, every terrible and wonderful thing, could have been a dream.
The most awful, wonderful dream of my life.
But the throbbing I feel is only in my stomach—not my leg and head and chest and throat, the way it was when my poor, barely alive body came back to life after the crash.
I blink, and my eyes obey me—another difference.
The light is piercing but bearable. I look around at a small but clean hospital room. At first I think it’s empty, but then I see Benson curled up in the gray recliner, his dingy white T-shirt almost blending in.
“Benson?” My voice sounds different. Not a lot, but enough that I know these are not the vocal chords I was born with.
He’s instantly awake. “Tave!” He vaults up out of the chair, trips on his shoes, and sprawls on the floor. Maybe not quite instantly.
I smile weakly as he gets to his feet and comes to sit beside me, reaching for my hand. The one without an IV. “How do you feel?”
I have to consider his question. “I’ve felt worse,” I settle on. Oh, that is the truth. I confess the pathos that being stabbed in the stomach only rates minor inconvenience in my life.
“Is . . .” I hate to ask Benson, but it’s the most important question. “Do you know if Logan got out?”
Benson shakes his head. “Not no,” he corrects quickly. “We don’t know.” He shrugs helplessly. “We don’t know anything beyond the four of us.”
Oh gods. Logan.
And the loss feels somehow worse having woken up in a hospital bed for the second time in my life. I hate hospitals now. Hate is too tame a word. I want to jump up and run screaming from the room rather than lie here at the mercy of a team of doctors and nurses as I fight to make my body obey me. Tears are pricking at my eyes, and panic and regret and a sharp mourning are sweeping through me. “Benson,” I whisper, “hold me.”
He hesitates for a moment, but I know it’s not me per se—he’s worried about hurting me. Again. I scoot over a bit, and he slips into the bed, his body warm against mine. I curl against his shoulder, and his hands rub up and down my back as I wait for the terror to fade.
“I left him.” My heart aches at the thought. “I saw him. At the last second.”
“Dad said we had to,” Benson whispers.
“No.” My lips tremble. “There was a moment when I had a choice. I chose you. Instead of him. I left him.” The sight of the triangle collapsing in on itself. It would have killed all the humans. Or—at the very least—those not close enough for an Earthbound to save them.
What about Audra?
Daniel?
Logan?
Logan.
Logan.
My heart wants to cry, but my body has no tears left. “I would know, wouldn’t I?” I ask. “If he was dead?”
Benson is quiet for long seconds, his fingers rubbing lightly over my arms. “Maybe,” he finally says. “You often seem to just know things.”
It’s not a yes. But it’s not a no either. “Thank you for bringing me here,” I say into his shirt.
“Thank you for holding on,” he whispers.
After a few minutes I feel calm enough to raise my face from his shoulder and look at him.
“I hope he’s alive, Ben. But I can’t go back to him.”
He’s silent, and I know I’ve put him in an awkward position, listening to me talk about the guy I should be in love with. Who might be dead.
I’m not sure just how to explain this, but it has to be said. “Benson, have you ever been to the top of a really tall building and looked down and gotten that weird feeling in your stomach?”
“Sure.”
I hesitate. “That’s how I feel when I look into Logan’s eyes. The way he feels about me—the love he has for me—it’s so vast and deep it makes me dizzy to see it.”
He shifts uncomfortably but doesn’t pull away.
“But I can’t spend the rest of my life trying to be good enough for someone. I can’t love someone just because I’m supposed to. I just . . . I can’t be with him.” I lay my cheek against his chest again. “Especially when I want so badly to be with you.” I chuckle sadly. “I guess I really am an ant.”
“An ant?” Benson asks, clearly beyond confused.
“I’ll explain another time.” I force myself to sit up. To look him squarely in the face. “Benson, I’m at war with the Earthbound. Maybe some of them will believe me and be on my side, but I don’t think there will be very many. It’s literally going to be me against nearly the entirety of both brotherhoods.” I grip his arms with my hands. “Will you stand with me?”
“To the death,” Benson whispers with zero hesitation.
“Thank you.” The words feel so paltry. I lift a hand to his face, and when my fingertips make contact, my whole body seems to sag in relief. As I pull him forward with the slightest pressure against his cheek, I feel an almost audible click, as though my life was on the wrong course and only now is going back to its true destiny. My lips touch his, and a warmth spreads through me that’s more than wanting and desire—although it’s that as well—it’s comfort and pleasure and something beautiful that I can’t describe.
I push nearer, press closer, and a pain shoots up from my abdomen, making me gasp.
“I’m so sorry,” Benson says, looking me up and down, not sure what he did.
“It’s my stomach,” I say, gingerly fingering the surface of my hospital gown. “It hurts.”
“Do you want to look at it?”
“Yeah,” I say, not understanding why he’s even asking.
“Well I . . . I have no idea what you’re wearing under . . . there.”
I snort at his reddened face. “Like that really matters,” I say. I pull the bottom of my hospital gown up, leaving only the blanket to cover the barest of essentials, and reveal my stomach.
“Oh gods,” I breathe. I must seriously be under the influence of more pain meds than I thought because there’s a line of staples from just below my belly button to right between my breasts.
Benson is staring in horror. “I didn’t see it while you were still out,” he says, his face having gone from red to white in a matter of seconds. “They only described it.”
“What happened?” I ask. I am quite sure this is more than what Daniel did to me.
Benson sits back down on the edge of the bed, and it’s probably a good thing he did so before falling over. “Here’s what the doctors told me; maybe you can make sense of it. I told them we were at a party last night and that I didn’t know what had happened to you, just that you told me to take you to a hospital. When they came out, they told me you’d been stabbed.”
“Daniel stabbed me,” I confirm.
He nods. “But that wasn’t the weird part. They said they had to extend the incision because your entire abdominal cavity was filled with blood and . . . and stuff. They used bigger words. But basically, they said it looked like you had been stabbed multiple times, but that there was only one entry wound, and they had to go all over cleaning everything out.”
“Oh, thank goodness,” I say, and Benson looks at me funny. I explain as well as I can what Audra told me about what would have happened in my body when Daniel severed my throat from the inside. And the resulting mess it would have created. “I would have had to go to someone else and have it fixed, but they were smart enough to take care of it. So now everything’s okay.”
“You made yourself a new throat?” Benson asks, amazed. I remember that he’s been around Earthbounds his whole life, and instead of that making me mad
, this time I’m proud that I could impress someone who has seen everything he’s seen. “That’s why you sound different.”
I kinda love that he noticed.
He looks somberly down at the incision my belly. “We can’t stay here waiting for your stomach to heal,” he says. “We took a risk checking you in and letting them take you into surgery. I am so sorry to do this to you, but how soon do you think you can leave?”
“Benson,” I start to scold.
“Tave, it’s not easy to kill a god. Even after everything collapsed, they could be on their way here right now.”
“Benson—”
“Please, please, Tave, don’t make me watch them take you again.” His eyes shine with tears, and I reach out a hand for his.
“Just look,” I whisper, then turn my attention to my stomach. Slowly, carefully, an inch at a time, I transform the staples into unbroken skin. In less than a minute Benson is sucking in fast breaths and staring at my unmarked abdomen.
“I didn’t think of that,” he says after a long silence.
“It’s not perfect,” I say, cringing as I push up to sitting. “The stitches are still there on the inside. I don’t know enough about anatomy to heal it all the way down, not to mention muscle walls and organs and . . . stuff like that.” I transform the air around me into underwear and loose cotton pants as I slide from beneath the blankets, and another thought gives me a cotton T-shirt and bra instead of the short hospital gown. I smile painfully at him as a jolt sears through my abdomen. “I’m going to be very sore for a while.”
Sore may be a bit of an understatement; it’s difficult to even stand up straight. But I have very little pride left, so I let myself hunch, leaning on him. Another thought takes away the IV, the little chest sensors, and the heartbeat thing on my finger. “What do we do now?” I ask, trying to be brave.
“Thomas and Alanna are getting us a car.”
“Dare I ask exactly what that means?” I ask, rolling my eyes.
“I’m not sure, actually,” Benson says. “Before he left us—my mom and brother and me, I mean—my father was an automotive engineer. For all I know he’s creating us the best car ever made. But he could be acquiring it the other way too.” His phone chimes and he pulls it out and looks at the screen. “We’re about to find out. He’s ready and wants instructions.” He looks up at me in question.