Of Breakable Things (38 page)

“Ten to three,” Jonas said. “There’s no guarantee. And I’m sure there are more of them waiting somewhere. We’re outnumbered.”

Alex didn't want Jonas to speak. She hated his voice, hated that he'd put them in this situation. But her hatred didn't change their predicament. She considered the newburies standing above them and knew someone was missing. Jack wouldn’t go anywhere without Calla. She had to be waiting somewhere, and Alex doubted she was alone.

“We can take it,” Chase insisted.

“What if Jonas tells everyone what he saw here?” a girl said in a low voice. “Or his brother, what if he tells?”

“We can’t go back. We can protect each other,” Hecker said. “Isn’t that what this is all about? Maybe that’s our test. There are plenty of other cities.”

Reuben shifted from foot to foot nervously. “I don’t know.”

Joey glared at Reuben disdainfully.

“It’s her choice to come with us willingly or not.” Hecker began to push at the air around him.

Alex could feel it like a gentle wave in the ocean, preceding the more vicious one looming. She watched in the horror while the others mimicked him.

Chase’s voice was confident in her mind.
Blast ’em
.

Alex had enough enmity bottled inside her to take out an entire town. She could feel the energy gearing, and she cringed in discomfort. Jack saw her face and there was a split second of panic in his eyes, but it was too late. The pressure in her head became too much. She couldn’t hold on any longer. Her hands flew to her head, but she wasn’t foolish enough to think she could actually grab hold of it. The force of her fury escaped and crashed to the ground.

She was liberated, no longer stifled by the fear of harming someone. The effect of the energy was an earthquake shaking the world.

The ground rippled, and spirits flew in various directions, but those who managed to remain on their feet shot blasts back. Before Alex knew it, she was knocked face down by the force of the blow. There was a pain shooting into her neck like she’d been hit with a fifty pound dumbbell.

She rolled onto her back and shoved against the air in another burst of energy, though much weaker than the first. The attackers scattered like ants, making a break for it.

Chase grabbed Alex’s hand and yanked her to her feet, dragging her from the wreckage. Jonas followed, blocking several blows.

“Skye,” Alex reminded them.

“She’ll be better off where she is,” Chase said, sprinting across the yard. “We’re leading them away from her.” He skidded to a stop.

A perimeter of attackers appeared, encircling the yard. Alex’s heart dropped. She was right. A second wave had been waiting, Calla among them.

Chase had a firm grasp on Alex’s hand, and he used his other arm to shove fiercely at the air. He threw the remnants of blackened furniture, which whizzed across the yard, knocking into the attackers. Jonas and Alex followed his lead.

Alex concentrated her energy into each object, holding her hand steady before flicking her wrist like she was tossing a Frisbee. The debris obeyed and shot toward her targets with the velocity of a bullet leaving a gun.

Each time a desk or a bed took out one of their fighters, two more seemed to reappear in their place. Alex felt a blast to arm, a smack to her head, a shot to the leg. Too many hits came at once, and the circle was closing in on them. Alex centered her anger into her core, ready to explode again.

Suddenly, a wind yanked her feet from under her and fell forward. “Oomph,” Alex groaned, landing flat on her face in the dirt. Before she could move, she was jerked backwards across the overgrown weeds, bouncing off the rocks and stray bricks mercilessly. She zigzagged feet first through the bodies of the attackers, screaming in protest. She was leaving Chase and Jonas to fight alone. She clawed at the grass and flailed her arms, but it was useless.

When she finally came to a rest, she was slumped, belly down, on the outskirts of the fray, and Calla was at her side. Calla’s hands opened over Alex’s face, pushing pressure against her. Why wasn’t she fighting? Why was she trying to
save
Alex?

Then she noticed Jack there, too. “We can’t let her back in,” he ordered.

Alex tried to stand up, but she couldn’t. It was the strangest and most agonizing feeling she’d ever encountered. She knew what she wanted to do, but she couldn’t do it. She wasn’t numb, but she had no control over her movements. It felt like a vise held her in place.

“Just concentrate on keeping her between us. She won’t be able to move,” Jack told his sister icily.

They weren’t trying to protect Alex. They were trying to contain her. She was helpless, useless. Calla and Jack had paralyzed her; how? She could only listen to the sounds of battle. The wind whistled erratically through the air and collided with its targets louder than claps of thunder. If she had closed her eyes, she would have believed she was listening to a hurricane.

“Al-ex?” Chase’s horrified voice climbed above the chaos followed by a muffled groan of pain. “Alex!” he bellowed again.

Alex’s heart began to crumble into a million pieces. She wanted to curse at Calla, scream at her. If she was strong enough to have a gift like this, whether she needed Jack to make it work or not, Calla didn’t need to be a part of a group. The city would have kept her in Brigitta anyway. Then again, maybe that was Calla’s fear. That she’d be forced to stay in a town that ridiculed her.

Chase
, Alex gasped inside her head.

Where are you?
Even in his thoughts, his voice was choked. Strained.

The Bonds are holding me out here.

Blast through them and run!

I can’t. They’re
stronger
than me.
She couldn’t believe the words even as she thought them.

He growled in fury.
You’re not hurt?

Not physically
. Alex willed Calla to break her focus, but she didn’t falter, not even when the crowd began to shift toward them. Alex could see Chase and Jonas back to back, holding their own against so many spirits, kicking, shoving, punching at the air, attempting to beat them to death. Thankfully, none of the attackers seemed brave enough to get too close. Instead, they fought equally, waiting for someone else to strike the hardest.

It was Reuben who marched formidably on the outskirts of the group. He side-stepped around the fighters, his doughy face etched in concentration, waiting. And then a crash erupted above Chase and Jonas. They ducked to avoid the impact. When they stood up,
whoosh
! The blast of the force propelled Chase away from his brother and Alex could only watch in horror. Chase gyrated through the air before crumpling at the crowd’s feet.

Before Chase could recover, Reuben lifted his arms, pausing for only a moment to glance defiantly at the others who had underestimated him. Chase rose like a marionette only to be smashed into the ground again.

Alex screamed silently in her head, trying to thrash, bite, kick, scream,
anything,
but her body refused to move. It was like crying at the top of her lungs in a soundproof bubble. Chase rose and fell, and rose and fell, flopping around like a lifeless rag doll. The mob scurried to Chase, and Alex could only watch in revulsion. Seeing his disadvantage, they all began to take hits at the body Reuben continued to control.

Alex tried to claw at the ground and fight for what she had lost once before.
No,
she was sobbing in her head,
not him, not him
. And her own mind began to ache, to succumb to the pain of it all and try to take some of it away from Chase. And then out of nowhere came the shattering of glass. Kaleb flew from the ruins of the asylum and zipped across the open the field. He rocketed through the mob and the attackers were blown off their feet. Confusion and fury corroded his blue eyes, and in one violent shove to the space around him, he eradicated half the crowd. How could he have so much force in his mind? His
mind
. Kaleb was fighting without touching anyone, using the force of his energy to knock them aside. Calla and Jack couldn’t paralyze her, because she no longer had a body. They could only be holding her here in her mind. She could still think, and her thoughts were active, so she could still move.

Move something
, she commanded herself. She used every ounce of her concentration to elevate a nearby tree branch. She spun it in circles and released it, and the trajectory led directly over Calla’s head.

It broke the twins’ concentration for only a millisecond, but that was all Alex needed. She flung her arm through the air like a right hook, allowing its haste to pummel Calla’s freckled face into the dirt. Alex jumped up and lifted her elbow, slamming all of her anger into the hit.

Calla doubled over. She fell to the ground and began scooting away and searching for her brother, but Jack was already gone. Calla yelped fearfully at Alex before ducking her head and crawling into the woods.

Kaleb was fighting what seemed like five spirits at once, his arms whipping so rapidly his movements blurred. Jonas darted around quickly so no one could strike him. There were spirits sprawled across the battlegrounds, but none of them were Chase.

A large body came rushing toward her. Reuben. Her mind reacted, flashing the image of Kender Federive battling the banshee, and the rest of her acted accordingly. Without knowing how or what she was doing, she spun into the air like a tornado and then scissor-kicked her legs, connecting with the air around his piggish face. The force of it sounded like smacking an open palm on bare skin, but it was enough to knock him on the ground. She leaped over him, and in the fray she found Jack, splitting his shoves between Kaleb and Chase. Alex sprinted into the mass, pushing aside everyone in her way. She stopped several feet from Jack and concentrated, allowing her disappointment and hatred to spiral inside of her.

Something that felt like fire shot Alex between her shoulder blades. She fell forward, crying out in pain.

Jack noticed and he screamed out, “Use the rest of it!”

Joey Rellingsworh held a jagged rock the size of a paperweight. He turned it around in his hand, indecision on his face.

“Do it!” Jack yelled moments before Kaleb slammed into him. Jack’s eyes bulged before he fell. Kaleb lifted his arms and aimed a jolt square into Jack’s chest. Without his sister, Jack was no match for Kaleb.

Behind them, several spirits flocked together. Alex didn’t need to question why. If these newburies were birds of a feather, they were vultures. She ran to them, knowing she would find Chase at their feet. There were at least ten spirits on him, pummeling him with hit after hit, not afraid anymore. Some were throwing pieces of jagged rock. There were too many for Alex to take on alone.

Alex fell to her knees before Chase. For a moment, she held out her hands helplessly, and a sob shot up through her before she slammed herself over him, trying hopelessly to shield him from all angles.

She felt a stinging shot into her back, then her neck. She couldn’t stop her body from convulsing with each strike. But nothing was worse than the silence telling her that Chase was gone. She shut her eyes tight, trying to withstand the agonizing pain, and let out a long, low scream. It lifted into the air and carried through the trees and into the depths of the world.

And then everything went silent.

It didn’t feel like her physical death at all. It was like the ending of a fabulous dream, the kind where you don’t dare open your eyes, thinking that maybe if you fight consciousness, the movie reel will resume. And yet you can’t even remember what the dream was about.

In that split second between sleep and awake, all Alex could feel was Chase. It wasn’t like she could feel him lying beside her. It was like he was
everywhere
. If his smile could become a physical feeling, this would be it. Despite everything Miss Petra had told Alex about the erasing of memories, Alex didn’t doubt for one second that she was tasting Heaven, even if only a spoonful.

Before she could tighten her grip, the comfort was ripped away like pulling the sheets from a warm bed. Alex felt numbed, barren, empty. Her sore head felt heavy, but she could still
feel
, so that was something, right? So where exactly was she?
What
exactly was she?

The thought of opening her eyes terrified her. Alex expected she might find herself back in Miss Petra’s classroom with a fresh set of decisions waiting for her, but the scent she caught was not of freshly sharpened pencils and blackboard chalk but hospital smells: starched bed sheets, bleach, and sadness. Her body was stretched out on a stiffly padded cushion.

Had she never died? It was possible that her brain had completely invented Eidolon in some insanely torturous dream, and now she was going to awake in the institution to find a nurse ready to dope her living mind with medication and psychoanalysis. The only good news was that when the true reality hit, it would kill her for sure.

Abruptly, in the midst of her frenzy, a slice of her mind pieced away, opening a space for Chase. He wasn’t far from her.