Defiance (36 page)

It will attack itself. But it won’t attack the Commander.

“Logan—”

“Look at it. The beast is sniffing something—”

“It’s always sniffing something. It tracks by scent. I can’t get this to work!”

“No, it isn’t tracking. It’s shying away. Something about that lizard foot makes it unwilling to attack.”

The Cursed One shudders as I press more buttons, willing it to get over whatever issue it has with the Commander’s necklace and destroy him with fire. It shudders, giant ripples tearing along its frame, but it refuses to attack.

“The foot protects him. Where did he get it?” He mumbles beneath his breath, listing options, trying to make connections.

“Who cares where he got it? Let’s go rip it off of him.”

“He’s had that necklace for as long as anyone can remember. In drawings of him protecting the first survivors fifty years ago, you can see the chain around his neck before the rest of it disappears beneath his coat. That was right after his team returned from the beast’s den. It’s a trophy. He must have killed another beast. The Cursed One’s mate? Its children? No wonder it won’t attack. The lingering pheromones must keep it at bay. What do you want to bet all the city-state leaders have necklaces just like this one?”

“I don’t want to bet anything. I want the Commander to suffer and die. We have to kill him ourselves.” I’m already reaching for my knife, but Logan stays my hand.

“Keep the Cursed One as close to him as you can to distract him.” He throws off his cloak, drops to the forest floor and draws his sword. “I’m going after him.”

“Wait!”

He looks at me, cold purpose on his face, his dark-blond hair turned red by the flames behind him, and says, “I know you want to be the one to kill him. But please don’t ask me to send you against the Commander in the presence of the Cursed One with nothing but your knife.”

I do want to be the one to kill him. But more than that, I want him
dead
. My knife is no match for the Commander. Logan has a much better chance.

“I wasn’t going to argue.”

“Then what were you going to do?”

The fire hisses and pops as the oak tree caves in on itself, and I jump down to the forest floor beside Logan. I regret all the things I never said to Dad and to Oliver. I’m not going to have regrets here, too.

I throw my arms around his neck. “I love you, Logan. Always.”

A fierce smile lights his face for a moment, and he grabs the front of my tunic, hauls me against him, and kisses me. “I love you, too. Always.” Then he’s gone, and I’m pressing buttons with frantic fingers, trying to keep the Cursed One as close to the Commander as possible to give Logan a chance.

I
circle through the tree line to position myself behind the Commander. No one stops me. Every guard in the area is either running for his life or already dead.

The Cursed One roars, spitting fire in every direction, blackening the dirt perimeter that encircles Baalboden.

The Commander holds his severed lizard foot in front of him and laughs.

I heft my sword in the shelter of the trees twenty yards behind the Commander. All of my anger, pain, and loss coalesce into an unyielding sense of purpose.

He’s mine. For Oliver. For Jared. For Rachel. For my mother. For the citizens of Baalboden who crave change.

For me.

My sword flashes in the sunlight as I step away from the trees and gauge my approach. I can sprint forward. Bury my blade in the back of his neck before he knows I’m there. And take the talisman that keeps the Cursed One at bay so I can hold off the creature’s attack until Rachel sends it back to the depths of the Earth.

Raising my sword, I lower the point to the necessary trajectory, drag in a deep breath, and start running. I’m over halfway there when the entire plan falls to pieces.

The Cursed One jerks its head up as if it hears something and suddenly lunges west.

Straight for Baalboden.

The Commander yells, drops his talisman against his chest, and runs toward the city. Rachel bursts out of the trees, her face filled with desperate terror as she presses the bottom two buttons on the device. The ones that should turn the beast away from Baalboden.

The Cursed One never deviates.

Fire bursts from its mouth as it strafes the Wall. The stone is scorched black, but the Wall is too thick for even the Cursed One to destroy. Any relief I feel disappears in an instant as the beast rears up, plunges into the ground, and explodes into the air on the other side of the Wall in a shower of cobblestone, dirt, and flame.

“No!”

Rachel is screaming. Running toward the Wall. Slamming the third button. The one that
should
send the Cursed One back into the bowels of the Earth.

I race to join her as plumes of thick black smoke billow up from the city. The turret closest to us explodes into flame and slowly topples to the ground in a hail of sparks and fiery chunks of wood.

The Commander veers north, apparently thinking to run the entire way around the Wall to get to the gate. He’s a fool. By the time he reaches it, the city will be nothing but rubble.

“It isn’t working. Help me!” Rachel thrusts the device into my hands, and I drop my sword so I can push the finger pads.

We’re close enough to the Wall now that we can hear the screaming from inside. There’s no way over the Wall. No gate unless we take the time to run all the way around the circumference of the city like the Commander. Rachel doesn’t hesitate. We reach the jagged hole left by the Cursed One, and she leaps into it.

I follow. We slide down about fifteen yards before the tunnel turns upward again.

She’s clawing her way toward the surface. I’m digging for footholds right behind her. Above us, the citizens in the East Quarter are screaming in agony.

We scramble through the crater left by the Cursed One, and my stomach sinks as I take in the chaos. Everything is burning.
Everything
. Brilliant gold and crimson flames chew through homes, spew thick black smoke toward the sky, and race blindly for the next piece of dry wood. Windows explode outward, sending hundreds of diamond-bright slivers of glass through the air. And through it all, the monstrous shape of the Cursed One coils, lashing out with its tail to crush wagons, buildings, and people. Strafing entire streets with blistering fire. Bellowing a hoarse, guttural cry that shakes the ground.

The few people still on their feet are running in a blind panic. As fire leaps from building to building, street to street, intent on destroying the entire East Quarter, the Cursed One abruptly heads toward North Hub, blasting anything that moves with flames.

“Make it stop, Logan! Make it go away.”

I try. I push the button, and the creature pauses, shakes its head, and slams the ground with its spiked tail, shattering the cobblestones beneath it. Then it slides north again, spreading destruction and death in its wake.

Either our device is malfunctioning, or someone else is out there with another piece of tech capable of overriding this one. It doesn’t matter which is true. The end result is the same. Baalboden’s protective Wall has become a death trap for anyone left inside its embrace.

“We can’t stop it.”

She whirls toward me, her eyes full of tears. “We have to!”

“We
can’t
. All we can do is rescue as many people as possible.”

She doesn’t argue as I pull her toward a side street that isn’t yet on fire. It takes an agonizing three minutes to find what we need. In that time, the Cursed One turns North Hub into a blazing inferno. I pray the citizens there heard the screaming of their neighbors and had enough warning to start running.

The fourth backyard I check has a wagon and a panicked horse stomping in a double-stall animal shed. I hand the device to Rachel, and hitch the horse to the wagon as fast as I can. She stands beside me, staring at the wagon and shaking, but when I offer her a hand up to join me in the driver’s seat, she doesn’t hesitate.

We head down the alley and turn north. The sky is a haze of thick black smoke. Entire streets are nothing but sheets of flame. I crack the reins against the horse’s back, and we thunder toward the destruction.

A few people still stagger about, and we stop to haul them into the wagon bed. Most of the East Quarter is in shambles, but set apart from the rest is the Commander’s compound, untouched by fire. I calculate less than five minutes before the flames bridge the distance and begin destroying it. Which means Eloise and the other prisoners face a terrible death if I can’t figure out a way to free them in time.

A man rides by us on a sturdy-looking donkey. I recognize him as one of Drake’s companions from Thom’s Tankard. “Hey!” I call out, and he turns.

“Logan? Logan McEntire?”

“The prisoners in the dungeon. They won’t be able to escape without help. Can you—”

He turns his donkey toward the compound without waiting to hear the rest of my sentence.

“There should be a hole in the wall of the corner cell,” I yell at his retreating back.

The northern roads are all impassable, so I turn the wagon and head south. The ground shakes as the Cursed One turns southwest and bellows, lashing at buildings with its tail. The streets in front of us are clogged with wagons, people on donkeys or horses, or families hurrying toward the gate on foot. At our backs, a wall of impossible heat precedes the flames that race toward us.

We’ve failed them. All of them. We thought to destroy the leader who tormented them, and instead, we’ve brought destruction down on their heads. Rachel sits beside me, her finger holding down the third button continuously. Her tears are gone. In their place is the white-faced shock I first saw when I picked her up at Madam Illiard’s after Oliver’s murder.

We inch our way through the streets, surrounded by sobbing, screaming people and the thunderous roar of Baalboden succumbing to its fiery death in our wake. The Cursed One is a black blur in the distance—twisting, lunging, and roaring its triumph as it consumes South Edge. The crowds grow dense, nearly impassable, as we head west, and when we reach the gate, I stare at it in disbelief.

The gate is closed. Locked. And the guards are nowhere to be seen.

Suddenly, a girl runs alongside the wagon, grabs the board beside me, and swings onto the platform. I glance at her and recognize my jail visitor. Her face is alive with purpose as she looks at me.

“Can you get us out?”

Is she crazy? A ton of concrete and steel stand in our way. How am I supposed to move that?

The ground beneath us shakes as the Cursed One explodes out of South Edge and into Lower Market, spewing fire.

We’re next.

“Logan!” She snaps her fingers in front of me. “Can you get us out?”

A ton of concrete and steel. No way to get so many people over it. Or under it. We’ll have to go through.

“I’ll have to build a bomb.”

“Tell me what you need.”

“The abandoned warehouse beside the armory. There are two black metal barrels full of liquid. I need those and a supply of canning jars with lids. Can you help me get those?”

She cups her hands around her mouth and whistles, an ear-splitting note that momentarily silences those in our immediate vicinity.

“Logan can get us out. Dad”—she calls to my right, and I turn to see Drake standing there, soot stains on his patched tunic and part of his beard singed away—“get a team to the abandoned warehouse by the armory and bring back the metal barrels of liquid you find there.”

He nods, grabs a hulking man wearing a tattered cloak, and they head toward the armory.

The girl looks at the crowd surrounding us. “The rest of you, go through the homes near here and bring me every jar and lid you find. Empty the contents if you must.”

A few people immediately do her bidding, but most of them stare at us with nothing but confusion on their faces.

“Do you want to live?” She screams it at them, and more of them start moving. Before long, a line of people are dumping jars of every size into the back of the wagon.

North Hub and East Quarter are nothing but billowing clouds of black smoke. South Edge is a burning inferno behind us. Survivors of those three districts mingle with citizens from the western reaches of the city and jostle against the unyielding surface of the Wall like sheep penned in for a slaughter. I see Thom, his clothes still smoking, leading a donkey with Eloise perched on its back. He elbows his way toward us.

Another explosion rips through the air behind us, accompanied by a chorus of screams. The Cursed One is coming our way. I give it ten minutes before the beast reaches the gate and turns the citizens of Baalboden into nothing but a memory.

It’ll be a miracle if we make it out alive.

“What’s your name?” I ask the girl.

“Nola.”

“Thank you, Nola.” It’s less than she deserves, but it’s the best I can give.

Eight minutes left. Rachel is still holding down the button. I press a kiss against her head and say, “I love you.”

She looks at me, tears gathering in her eyes. “I love you, too.”

Six minutes. The ground beneath us trembles, violent shudders that send people to their knees. The flames are so close now, we can hear them crackling in the distance.

Five.

“Make way!” Drake and three other men stumble into the crowd, their clothing singed. Each pair holds a black barrel.

I let go of Rachel.

“Open the jars,” I say to Nola, and yell to the people in front of me to clear out of my way as Drake and his helpers load the barrels onto the wagon bed.

People stumble to the side as my wagon pushes through. Rachel drops the device and climbs into the wagon bed to help open jars.

Four minutes.

Pulling the horse to a stop twenty yards from the gate, I look at Nola. “Get them away from the gate. Close enough that they can run through as soon as it’s open, but far enough that they won’t be injured by falling debris.”

While Nola barks orders at the citizens filling the street, I leap into the wagon bed and point to Drake and one other. “Fill as many jars as you can with the liquid in your barrel. Be careful. It’s acid. It’ll burn your skin.”