Ablaze (Indestructible Trilogy Book 2) (4 page)

The divide.
I think of the river of churning lava, Cas standing on the brink. A horrible suspicion rises within me, but I can’t say it to Nolan. Not yet.

“Okay,” I say. “That’ll have to do for now.”

I pull the dagger back, and he breathes out. I actually frightened him.

Nolan doesn’t take his eyes off me as I back away. It’s like he thinks he’s looking at a stranger.
You and me both.
I don’t trust him.

I withdraw the blade. How I’m going to explain this to the others… I’ve no idea.

“Tonight,” I say, guilt already rising. But I can’t wait around for approval. I’ve wasted enough time already. As horrible as it is, Nolan’s my one link to the enemy.

This time, I
will
kill Jared. For real.

***

Of course, it’s harder than I anticipate, acting normal while planning to abandon everyone. I lie in bed fully-clothed in the full uniform of a Pyro, complete with the deep-red flame-resistant coat. The dormitory quietens as one by one, the others fall asleep. At midnight, I slip out of bed and tiptoe to the weapons room. Murray doesn’t sleep in his office but it’s locked anyway. Luckily, I know how to pick a lock. One of the skills Randy taught me in the wilderness, in case we had to steal from an abandoned house. It takes longer than I’d like. Then I have to repeat the process with the back door.

“I thought you’d gone.” Nolan appears from the gloom, close than I’d expected. His hand moves towards one of the weapons in my hand. I took as many as I could carry.

“Don’t you even think it,” I warn him.

“I know better than to mess with a girl with a dagger. Or thirty.” The corner of his mouth quirks up. I shake my head at him. I wish he
had
attacked me, or at least been hostile. It’d be easier to hate him. But he’s not a bad guy—just a coward.

Except I’ll never forgive him for what he did to Elle.

“Come on.”

Guilt tails me every step of the way. I asked Elle about patrol routes earlier, but I still expect someone to sneak up on us as we leave the back way, through the tunnel Murray declared unsafe after the fiends got in that way and tried to bring the ceiling down. The rocks blocking the path are nothing to my powers, though I do take the time to push them back into place afterwards. The fiends aren’t sneaking in again if I can help it.

But there’s no sign of them out here, even though night has fallen. I tread carefully on the platform, knowing too well how easy it is to fall. The path leads downwards, and I can’t help but pause besides the entrance to the cave. Now I know the truth, I’m guessing it was where they kept old experiments. Those winged skeletons.

Transcendents.

“We should move,” says Nolan, and I nearly spear him when he appears from the shadows beside me. Apparently I’m more on edge than I thought.

“Yeah.” I continue down the path. “Just thinking. I could fall from here and not break. Like a superhuman.”

“Superhuman? You’re not human at all, Leah. Have you no idea what you can do? I guess you haven’t been around here long enough to hear all the tales of the Transcendent. The last one could run faster than a cheetah and tackle a wall of solid concrete and survive. Before the end, back when we lived in hiding, she used to track the fiends miles away. She’d have this instinct, a sensitivity to the fiends that none of us could match up to. It was like she could smell them or something. Her whole body lit up like a beacon when they were nearby.”

I shake my head, feeling slightly dizzy. “I can tell you now, that’s never happened to me.”

“It didn’t for her at first,” he says. “She was like us to begin with—she was a Pyro, anyway. And then she got seriously injured in a fight with a fiend. The doctors did their best, but she was on the verge of death. Jared set Cas on her. He didn’t want to—he protested pretty loudly about it, but next thing you know, she’s walking about, on her feet again in a day. Never seen anything like it.” He sighs. “But Jared took a fancy to her. I don’t know what he did to her in there, but she became distant and stopped talking to the rest of us.”

“You knew her?” I ask quietly, thinking of Cas. He was her bodyguard, the one supposed to protect her.

And the one who made her Transcendent.

“Not well. I’d only been living there a few months, and she was miles ahead of everyone. She hated that we lived in hiding while the fiends kept breaking through. She said if we could take the fight over to them, we could destroy them forever.”

Take the fight over to them.
To the fiends’ world.

“That didn’t work out so great.” He scrutinises me. “I’d have expected you to ask more questions about her before now, Leah.”

“To who? No one would tell me a thing.” I cross my arms defensively. “Look, I’m still getting used to being a Pyro. Now it turns out I’m something else, and I nearly died for it. So you’d better tell me everything you know or I can’t promise I’ll protect you when we go up against Jared.”

“What I know?” Nolan’s shoulders slump. “Nothing. I wish I did. I don’t know how she got her powers, I don’t even know what happened on the front line. I was lucky, so were all of us survivors.”

“So you’ve not seen the fiends’ leaders?”

“I’m not convinced they exist,” he says. “Why aren’t they attacking us now? I admit I used to think there must be some kind of driving intelligence behind their attacks, but I guess they’re just mindless killers.”

I open my mouth to tell him about the one I fought, the shape-shifter who looked like Jared—but hesitate. He’s dead right that there doesn’t appear to be a reason for their attacking us. Ever since they first invaded, the first quakes, the attack that killed my sister, I’ve never had time to wonder
why
they did it. What the history is between them and the Pyros.

I haven’t tried to use my powers since the battle, but the flames burn still, underneath the surface. I draw in a deep breath like in one of the meditation sessions in training, and focus. I need to understand if I’m to beat Jared. He’s not Transcendent, whatever he might have done to himself. I imagine his smirking face right in front of me, and raise my clenched fist into the air.

A surge of heat almost knocks me off my feet. Light flares around me, and Nolan backs away, shielding his eyes. But to me, everything looks sharper, every speck of dust in the air stands out, defined. Every crack in the stone walls. Every curl of smoke from the lava.

And my dagger, which I hold amongst the others, gleams bright red like burning coals. My nerves stand on end, except it doesn’t hurt, it’s more of a tugging sensation, like the need to find food or sleep. Part mental, part physical. I turn around, half-involuntarily. It’s coming from nearby.

“What the hell?” Nolan says, as I step forward.

A fist crashes down without warning, sending rocks tumbling towards me. I dive out of the way, dropping half the daggers, and land on my feet, skidding on the wet path. The ground vibrates as the fiend lands in front of me. Wide as a small car and built like a mound of rock, its skin gleams russet-red in the rain, its ugly, flat face twisted in a scowl. It bares its long teeth at me and roars.

Behind me, Nolan curses.

Despite myself, a grin steals onto my face. I’m more than ready to fight again.

CHAPTER THREE

The fiend might be twice my size, but I’m a Pyro, and built to be stronger and faster than any fiend. My body moves almost without conscious thought, hand forming a fist, fire-coloured light flaring as I smack the fiend’s clenched hand aside. Its tiny eyes screw up against the light. In my other hand, a frisson of heat burns from the dagger to my skin, but it doesn’t burn me. The fire’s an extension of myself.

This is what I was meant to do.

I lash out with the dagger, see the flames dance over the edge of the blade, feel the connection between the weapon and me. Brownish-red blood sprays from the wound. I slash again, keep my feet a width apart. There’s not enough space on the platform to manoeuvre, but more than enough to strike. The weapon’s bonded to my blood, and I can channel the fire right through it. I slash at the fiend again. The smell of burning rises from the blade as the fiend’s skin begins to crumble on one side of its face. I leap back, out of range, as it swings its fists clumsily.
Too slow.

My weapon is a burning blaze; a filter of orange-red hangs over my vision. But I’m out of practise. The fiend’s wide shoulders hit the cliff walls, sending pieces of rock raining down on me. Unbalanced, I don’t dodge quickly enough and the fiend’s fist slams into my shoulder, knocking the spare daggers from my hands. Instinctively my hands move to grab them and the sharp point of a blade leaves a trail of agony up my arm. I gasp, staggering back.

The other weapons slide from my hands and clatter on the ground. Except my dagger, which remains attached to my hand. But when I try to move my arm, the pain almost makes me pass out. My vision goes fuzzy.

The fiend aims another blow at my head. I drop to a crouch, ignoring the pain in my right arm, and hit it from the side.

Suddenly, Nolan’s beside me, and he aims a punch of his own. The fiend’s wedged in by the cliff walls and can’t run. Between us, we pummel it—me using my free hand. One hit. Then another. Its skin starts to smoke all over, and cracks spread over the surface like breaking rock.

With a thunderous roar, the fiend drops to its knees. I pull back, my arm aching furiously, and my eyes meet Nolan’s. I look away, down at my arm. Already, the pain’s faded to a bruise-like ache.

The fiend’s crumbling before us, pieces of it breaking away into fragments. I move back out of range, and so does Nolan.

Silently, I bend down to retrieve the other weapons.

“Want a hand?” Nolan picks a sword up before I can move.

I spin around, half-expecting him to put the blade to my throat, but he simply sheathes it. I give him a suspicious look.

“I’m not going to hurt you, Leah. I don’t want to hurt anyone. I just want this damn curse off me.”

“Yeah, well, the others might not get that,” I say. “Not after what you did.”

“I just helped you, didn’t I?”

He indicates what’s left of the fiend, little more than a heap of stones. As if it never lived at all.

Despite myself, I bend down beside it, turning one of the rocks over. Thick blood stains my hand, and a strange sensation passes over me. The blood feels more like fire—Pyro fire, not painful. At least, not to me.

My mind replays the image of the first fiend I saw. The fiend that clawed its way out of a building as I watched, terrified, trying to get my sister away. It had an axe embedded in its side, presumably from some desperate person trying to defend themselves. The blood spraying from the wound looked unreal, cartoonish, but it burned holes in clothing, and Randy got a blister on his hand from where some of it touched him.

These things are deadly to humans, but not Pyros.

Why?

The question won’t leave me alone. It’s trivial in the grand scheme of things, and yet three days asleep have raised too many questions from the depths of my mind. What
are
the fiends, and what do they want with humans? What makes their blood different?

And what are the Pyros?

A voice whispers in my ears, soft, taunting:
“I needed their blood for my experiments. Cas himself carries it within him, and that same blood now resides in your veins. You are part of one of the monsters you so despise, Leah.”

No. It’s not true. Jared’s the real monster. Blood doesn’t mean a thing. I still
look
human. I still feel it.

I stare at the blood on my hand, and a dull pain vibrates up my other arm.

“Leah, come on,” says Nolan.

“Wait,” I say, hoarsely. I flex my hand and move the dagger, and this time, there’s no pain.

I’ve healed.

My heart drums in my ears. I stare another moment—I’ve never seen the healing work on my own body before, and my thoughts—
I’m human, I still feel human—
seem less certain. But I stand up, backing away from the remains of the fiend, and give the tunnel one last cursory glance. No more weapons lie on the ground.

Nolan and I walk down the mountain in silence. I stride ahead, like it can erase the guilt at abandoning the others. Am I as bad as Nolan now?

As we reach the crossing, the place where the sea swirls inland, Nolan pauses. “I want to know what I’m getting in for,” he says.

“I thought you just wanted to be free.”

“That won’t help if we both get captured. What’s this cure?”

I start to say something, but the low, distant sound of thunder interrupts. Followed by a familiar roar.

Another fiend.

“Crap,” I say.

“You know we’re exposed out here, don’t you?” Nolan asks, but I ignore him and jump onto the first stepping stone. The sea’s higher than before, and my heart starts beating fast. I’ve never liked open water
or
stepping stones. Salt spray stings my sunburned hands and face.