Divided: The Alliance Series Book Four (29 page)

God. No.

How many had died?

“Kay, get
back
here,” said Nell. “There’s another message from Ada.”

Ada. She was alive. Somehow that notion slotted through the chaotic jumble—the truth I hadn’t quite yet grasped—I’d survived.

The sciras. It had likely saved my life.

God. Dammit. Carl had been with the other guards. I moved to the other doorway. “There was a bomb,” I said. “But there might be survivors. If you want to send people through, make sure they have some kind of protection. Jeth…” I tapped the earpiece. “You don’t have any more of that sciras, do you?”

“Nell has the other one,” he said. “What happened?”

“It saved my life,” I said. Numbly. A bomb. A fucking bomb. “The Stoneskins set a trap—a bomb. But there might be survivors. I can’t reach them.”

Someone shouted from the other side of the ruins, “The street’s caved in! We need help over here!”

The guards in the Passage parted to let two people through, both wearing the shell-like suits of Valeria’s enforcement officers. “We’ll search,” said one of them. “Our armour has protection built into it. If we’d known—”

“This breaks protocol,” someone said. “Sending people into a hostile world.”

“Screw protocol,” yelled another guard. “Our people are out there.”

No. It was my fault. I led them there.
I moved aside to let the guards pass, only now aware just how hard I was shaking.

“Hey!” a male voice called from the ruins. Carl.

Relief flooded me. At least one person was alive.

“We need help over here!”

“Is it safe?” The two shell-suited men approached the blockade warily.

“I think the blast—whatever it was—was in one of the buildings,” I said. “It felt like it came from that way.”

“The plant absorbed most of the blast!” Carl said. “Lucky this was an open space—we had room to run.”

Lucky.
That was too close.
And the others should have had the same protection as me. I should have thought first, not gave orders I didn’t have the authority to give.

Enough.

“There’s a message!” Nell shouted at me from behind the other doorway. “Says it’s from someone called Aric.”

I spun around and stared at her. “What?”

Now I knew I wasn’t hallucinating. A hallucination would make more sense.

“Ada—she’s on Cethrax. There are wyverns.”

Guilt at leaving the others warred with fierce urgency.
The Stoneskins are with Ada. You have to get her.
With a last quick glance at the rescue operation happening behind me, I pulled out the world-key, tracker at the ready, and moved to the doorway. To Nell. I couldn’t wait. I’d have to check on the others later. Ada needed me.

“Do you have a weapon?” I asked, crossing into the Passage again.

“Do you think I’m stupid?” Nell stood beside a blank stretch of wall, glaring at anyone who came near.

My hands shook from the adrenaline and it took several attempts to redraw the symbols on a free patch of wall with the world-key. This time, Ada’s signal was clear, pointing one way. The door opened with barely a sound. Swampy water washed against the floor of the Passages, and the red-tinged horizon was marked with several bird-like shadows. Below, the ruin of an old stone building was outlined against the sky. I gripped the dagger Carl had given me.

“Stay back,” I said to Nell out of the corner of my mouth. “I know this place…”

Screech!

One of the shadows dived, and I ran through the doorway, turning invisible. Get to Ada first, kill those bastards later.

The shadow dove at me, forcing me to run out of the way. The doorway snapped closed, and I heard Nell’s angry shout from behind, but two more shadows passed over my head. Wyverns. Fully-grown ones this time. They’d seen me.

I swore as the thick mud slowed me down. A gigantic fallen tree blocked the path, and throwing patience out the window entirely, I sent a blast of magic at it.

The recoil was stronger than I expected, sending me staggering back into the mud, but it also sent the wyverns soaring out of sight with loud screeches. I had no clue where Ada was, but the fortress was the one landmark, and the wyverns approaching it told me they’d fixated on something there.

The sky lit up, white, as magic seared the air. Someone over there had used magic. In fact— sparks were flying, arcs of lightning piercing the sky. But magic wouldn’t harm the wyverns.

I ran. Two wyverns circled the fortress-like building and as someone fired magic at them again, the recoil rebounded, lighting up the sky. A nearby tree fell, split in two. And there were people, at least a dozen, running in all directions, some hiding behind trees, others cowering on the ground.

Screw it all. “Ada!” I shouted.

My heart stopped. A wyvern flew overhead, Ada clutched in its claws, as magic struck in a haze of white. I blinked to clear my eyes.

God. No.
“Ada!”

The world cleared. Ada clung to the wyvern’s claws. I couldn’t fire magic at the creature in case I hit Ada instead. Unless…

I let magic spark from my hands, aiming it at the ground. The boost sent me flying ten feet in the air. Breathlessly, I yelled, “Come and get me, you clawed bastard!”

The wyvern flew at me, screeching. The momentum was already driving me back towards the ground, but as its claws swiped, Ada wriggled free and jumped. We both hit the ground, rolling over in the mud, and I came upright to find her staring at me, dazed.

“Kay,” she said, swaying on the spot. “You’re not dead…”

“No, but we need to move.” That goddamned wyvern wasn’t going to quit. And like hell was I going to let it at Ada again.

“Agreed.” She staggered forward, but she didn’t seem hurt, only shaken by the fall. “The others.” She turned back to the other people, who the second wyvern was dive-bombing. The first fixed its eyes on me, and soared downwards.

Cursing, I drew my dagger and handed her the stunner, which she took in a shaking hand just in time to aim at the wyvern. Sparks shot from the end, striking the wyvern in its less-protected wings, and it screeched, wheeling higher, out of reach.

A human body fell from the sky, dropped by the other lizard—those people must not be armed. No wonder they were fighting with magic. It wouldn’t do much good against the wyverns’ thick armour. And these wyverns were clever bastards, not flying close enough to the ground to make them vulnerable.

Hit the weak spots… the joints in its armour and wings.
I took aim and shot magic from my fingertips again as the second wyvern flew at the cowering humans. Ada shot magic at it, but it had already grabbed a human—they didn’t even struggle.

I let sparks fan out from my palms, challenging the nearest lizard to dive-bomb me. The wyvern levelled its flight path, claws swiping at Ada. Sparks filled the air, and something whizzed past my head. Not magic. Amongst the humans, a woman straightened up and caught whatever it was in her hand. A sharpened tree branch?

I twisted in time to see Aric, of all people, sprinting across the marsh, arms full of more branches.

“You wanna live?” he yelled at the cowering people on the ground. “Fight, you bloody morons!”

I had to give him credit, those branches were decently sharp to make improvised weapons. But only Aric would be idiot enough to draw attention to himself with two angry wyverns above. The second dropped the human it held and flew at him. The first circled above Ada and me. I sent a jolt of power at the joint on its right wing, burning a sizzling hole through it. The wyvern screamed, knocked off balance in the air, and circled lower. I stabbed at its swiping claws with the dagger, severing at least one of them—and Ada was ready with her stunner.

Its barbed tail thrashed, and I jumped, swiping the dagger through the air. Blood poured from its tail, but I hadn’t severed it. Ada shot magic right into the wound and the wyvern bucked and screamed, droplets of blood spattering the ground. The other wyvern screeched at it, wings flapping frantically as Aric and three others stabbed at it with branches sharpened to wicked points.

“Get away from here!” Ada shouted, magic flaring from the stunner in her hand. The wyvern took the hint and flew lopsidedly sideways, colliding with its partner. They fell in a pile of thrashing limbs and blood.

Aric ran at them, stabbing with a branch. They took off again, tangled together, blood spattering the marshy ground.

“We need to get out of here.” Ada turned to me, wide-eyed. “You’re really here. Holy hell…”

“Yeah,” I said, keeping one eye on the wyverns, which flew higher, out of reach. I dug my free hand into my pocket and got out the world-key. Better to open a door here than run all the way back, but I couldn’t let the wyverns into the Passages.

“Kay,
hurry!
Aric, Gervene, get the others over here, quick!”

I couldn’t figure out why she was freaking out so much—she’d seemed composed fighting the wyvern. I activated the world-key, and crouched to carve the symbols into the ground. It wasn’t ideal, but most of those people hadn’t been fighting—they were either hurt or in shock, and we had to get them to safety.

Damn it all to hell. I drew the last symbol, the one I’d seen on Vey-Xanetha—for the Passages.

Something rock-hard collided with the back of my head. Stars burst behind my eyes, and the world-key was snatched from my grasp.

A Stoneskin held the world-key up to the sky, mouth stretched in an insane smile.

“Thank you, human!” he said. “You have given us a way out! I can feel Enzar calling.”

Shit.
“No way,” I said, amplifying the sciras. But the world was hazy, and the back of my head throbbed. I missed with my first strike, and he hit me on the jaw. Not hard enough to break it—the sciras had taken care of that—but it made my vision swim again. And he was getting away. With the world-key.

“No!” Ada shouted, and then yelled in pain as the Stoneskin knocked her into the marsh. Cursing my blurred vision, I pushed to my feet, sprinting to place myself between her and the Stoneskin monster. But he wasn’t alone. There were others—at least a dozen human-shaped monsters with marble skin. And further out, another group were rounding up the humans—one woman struggled and a particularly large Stoneskin hit her with enough force to send her flying ten feet across the swamp.

“You bastards!” Ada yelled.

We were outnumbered by far. I had the one sciras-chameleon, and even if I transferred the effects to Ada, there were too many of them to fight off between the pair of us. And the other humans—at least ten lay unmoving in the mud already. The ones huddled together wore dazed, deadened expressions. No sign of Aric. Maybe he’d run.

“Ada.” I walked over to her, unsteadily, and took her hand. She looked at me, and her eyes reflected everything I couldn’t put into words.

“How touching,” said the Stoneskin who seemed to be the leader. “I’m impressed with you, human, impressed enough not to kill you right away. In fact, I want to drag our game out a bit longer. Lock them both in the tower until I find Enzar. I don’t trust them.”

Enzar. The crazy bastard was looking for Ada’s homeworld. And I was the idiot who’d brought him the means to do it.

I squeezed Ada’s hand, hoping she’d get I was transferring power to her. She could absorb the effects of the Chameleon, so I hoped the same applied to the sciras. But I couldn’t use both at once, and in any case, we couldn’t just turn invisible and run for it when that lunatic held the means for destroying the Multiverse in his hands. No—I had to get a warning to the Alliance.

But two massive Stoneskins had turned in our direction. Whatever they were, they’d never been human. Their grey-marbled skin covered bulging muscles and curved claws, like some relation of Cethrax’s voxes. No way could I go up against one of those even with the sciras.

Shit.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

ADA

My arm throbbed, my head ached, and the StoneKing had the world-key. But hope stirred in my heart every time I looked at Kay, even as the two gigantic Stoneskins marched us back into the fortress, up the stairs to the tower. He was alive. They hadn’t killed him, and he’d been trying to find me all along.

And he’d
hit
one of them. He had some way of fighting them I’d not seen yet.
I never doubted you.
I wished, stupidly, they’d leave us alone to talk. Even though every minute brought us closer to our doom.

Into the tower room. The guard locked the door behind us.

“Shit,” said Kay, pacing to the window. One look outside told me it wouldn’t do any good to try to climb out. The platform below had collapsed when the wyvern had crashed into it, and there was no escaping a hundred-foot drop, right in the middle of the Stoneskins. They’d take us to pieces.

“God.” He hammered on the wall. “I can’t break it.”