Sovereign Hope (34 page)

Confusion
washed over Agatha’s face. “Was she wearing white?”

“
What?”

“
Was she wearing white? Did she have a dress on, or a white
shirt or something?” Her eyes were round and searching, waiting for
me to respond. I swallowed and raised my shoulders, unsure how the
information would be of any relevance.

“
Well? Was she?”

“
Yes! She was wearing a white dress. It looked like cotton.
She must be freezing. She has no shoes on, either.” How that would
be pertinent information I didn’t know, but I included it, anyway.
“Why? What does it matter?”

Agatha didn’t
answer. I was about to ask her again when all of a sudden there was
more noise, ear splitting and violent. A wall of pressure roared
out of the silo and blew up the other side of the ridge, hitting us
full force. Suddenly the sky was raining fire, painting the
blackness with a burnished, smoky orange glow. They had blown the
hangar.

Twisted metal
and concrete fell from the sky, popping and pinging metallically
with the heat. My ears sang. I was too stunned to do anything more
than get down and cover my head. Beatty’s hand was on my back and
then his body was over mine, blocking me from the bombardment of
burning debris.

Another
massive explosion rocked the ground underneath us. What if we were
above one of the corridors? If we were, then it might well collapse
and we were seconds from falling through into the furnace. I
waited, but the ground held fast.

The blasts
came in waves, and Beatty’s body pushed me into the dirt. My
internal organs felt like they were being liquefied, either by his
weight as I struggled beneath him, or by the jarring power of the
detonations.

I was light as
a feather when he eventually leaned back, my body floating up, up
towards the sky. My face was still pressed in the dirt, however, so
I knew that couldn’t be the case.

My side-on
perspective made the world look strange. The glow of the flames lit
up the inky black night to illuminate Tess and Oliver lying a few
feet away. Tess was crying, and Oliver cradled her in his arms
while he looked around, trying to figure out what was going on. My
ears were dulled to everything apart from the sound of my own
steady breathing and the crack and hiss of fire. The flames weren’t
visible from here, but I could sense the heat of them in the
atmosphere.

It would have
been easy to lie there in a daze forever if I hadn’t seen Agatha.
The left side of her face was scarlet, and her hair was matted with
blood. It caked thickly to the skin on her neck and her shoulder.
She stared over the other side of the ridge into the darkness,
desperately searching the night. Something was wrong. I had to get
to her.

My body
wouldn’t respond at first. When I did eventually manage to stand,
it was a fight to remain upright. My head swam and my stomach
pitched, suggesting its contents might be making a sudden guest
appearance.

Otis and
Beatty were madmen, laughing and clapping each other on the back
like excited children. Their eyes shone brightly, reflecting the
glow of the fire. Hadn’t their brother just been blown to
smithereens? Their behavior was bizarre, but there was no time to
worry about them. My focus was still on Agatha. The tiny woman gave
me a sidelong glance when I arrived at her side, but it was
fleeting.

The
destruction below was total. The huge metal silo, the only thing to
break the skyline for fifty miles, was destroyed. The force of the
blast had ripped the roof clean off and blown out the sides, too.
Shards of metal littered the ground, smoking, for a hundred yards
in every direction. The windshield of the first SUV was shattered,
and a six-foot-long piece of twisted steel was impaled through the
passenger side.

It took a
moment to locate the two men who had been left behind. Their bodies
had been flung twenty feet to the right. They lay awkwardly, their
arms and legs bent into unnatural angles, clearly dead.

Agatha prowled
back and forth along the top of the ridge, slipping every few steps
as the ground gave way beneath her feet. She stumbled as she moved
towards me, and I grabbed hold of her before she could fall.
“Agatha! What is it? What are you looking for?”

She spun and
fixed me with eyes filled with tension. “Are you sure that’s what
you saw? Are you sure there was a woman in white?”

“
Yes. Yeah, I’m sure. She was right there.” I pointed to the
second SUV and scoured the area myself, straining to see if the
woman had been picked up and thrown out by the blast, too. There
was no sign of her body.

“
We have to get out of here,” Agatha said.

“
What are you afraid of? That woman? She was all tied up!” I
cried after her, as she bolted down the dune.

“
That was to keep her away from
them
!” she shouted. “We have to
go
. Now!”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Queen of Hearts

“
Get up. We’re leaving,” Agatha shouted.

Oliver lifted
Tess up as if she weighed nothing and set her on her feet in one
swift movement. The three of us followed Agatha without
question.

“
What’s going on, Aggie?” Nyla called.

“
Farley saw a whyte!” Her voice echoed loudly in the quiet.
Suddenly Beatty and Otis’ smiles were gone and they were gawping at
me. Nyla stopped dead in her tracks, looking scornful.

“
That’s ridiculous, girl. There are no whytes.”

Agatha stepped
in before I could declare my confusion. “That was my word. She
doesn’t know what it means.”

Nyla’s jaw
dropped. “How can you know? You didn’t see. It could have been
anybody.”

“
It was a whyte. If you want to wait here to find out either
way, then you’re more than welcome. But don’t you think it makes
sense?”

Beatty’s face was creased with a fierce determination when he
joined the conversation. “Regardless of whether it makes sense,
Aggie, they don’t have the power to do that anymore. The whytes
were destroyed before we were born. Even
they
knew they were
wrong.”

Agatha reached
the blue Jetta and yanked open the passenger door, gesturing me,
Tess and Oliver inside. “Yes, they knew they were wrong, but you
also know what these people are like. There’s nothing they won’t do
to win this fight. A whyte or two would definitely tip the scales
in their favor. Can you think of any other reason why they would
have a woman in a white dress tied up out in the desert?”

Beatty
swallowed and shrugged his shoulders. “You may be right, Aggie. But
Otis and I have to find Brynn. He’ll have made it out and we aren’t
leaving him here if there is a whyte stalking us.”

Nyla had been
staring at her feet while the two spoke but now her head snapped
up. She fixed her eyes on Beatty. “Don’t be a fool! She’s right.
We’re leaving. Brynn’s not stupid. He’d tell us to leave right now.
We have to get Scout out of here.”

Agatha still
had her hand on the passenger door when a shrill scream pierced the
air. I stepped forward, suddenly willing to believe that there was
something out there in the dark, even if I didn’t know what it was
yet. Tess and Oliver were right behind me; we were in the car by
the time the second scream resonated off the dune walls. I
swallowed back my panic. Had it come from Brynn or Cliff?

“
We’ll meet outside the city at the old motel off Route 40,
okay?” Agatha instructed the others as she buckled herself into the
driver’s seat.

“
Okay. We’re right behind you.” Nyla gave Beatty a forceful
look. He bowed his head, sighing heavily into his beard, and then
nodded.

“
Right behind you,” he agreed.

Agatha revved the engine and pulled away from the garage. The
wreckage of the silo gave one final crack and a tall pillar of
flame jetted into the sky overhead before it died back. I watched
it fade into a dull glow in the
rearview
mirror
as we sped away.

I pulled the
sleeves of my sweater over my hands in an attempt to warm them.
Everyone seemed lost inside themselves. We tore through the night
in silence for at least ten miles before Oliver spoke.

“
Agatha, please…where are we going? Why were you so worried
back there? What’s this whyte?”

Agatha replied
in a level voice. “When I grew up in the First Quarter, the elders
would always tell us stories from back in the beginning. The whytes
were one of their favorite stories when they wanted us to behave.
There were only ever three whytes created. They were difficult to
control and gloried in the destruction all living things,
regardless of whether it was Immortal, Immundus or human. They were
the Reavers’ tools but they were dangerous and unpredictable.

“
The story of their creation goes back before Aldan. It was
Simeon, one of the first Reavers, who made the first whyte, and he
did it out of love. He’d taken his rites many years before but
refused to destroy the woman who bore his son. She was gentle and
sweet, and he loved her. She stayed by his side always, and they
raised their child together, but one day she fell sick. They said
she burned in a fever so hot the sweat evaporated from her skin
before it could bead.

“
She died within less than a day. Simeon was distraught and
vowed to bring her back, but every last part of her spirit, her
life force, was gone. He couldn’t pass his energy into her and
return her to health. It destroyed him. The story goes that he held
her body in his arms and raged, furious that he was so powerless.
His love turned bitter in his chest and it is said that, in the
height of his fury, his anger and rage burst forth from him,
passing into the body of his love.

“
Simeon was overjoyed when he felt her stir in his arms, but
his joy soon turned to horror. He looked down upon the woman to
find her transformed and hideous. Her skin was deathly pale, the
irises of her eyes cloudy and unclear, blending with the whites of
her eyes. It was her mouth, though…her mouth was the most hideous
thing of all.

“
The elders used to tell us that just seeing the mouth of a
whyte would kill you. The skin is black and full of decay. For an
Immundus or a member of the Quarters, a bite from a whyte is a
death sentence in itself, but the madness that it infects you with
is much, much worse than death. You’re tormented by a violent
insanity, hurting yourself and anyone else who comes near you until
you finally die in excruciating pain.

“
The Reavers were more scared by the whytes than anyone, and
with good reason. They didn’t die, so when they were bitten they
just got the insanity and the pain but not the release of death at
the end. That’s what happened to Simeon. His wife tore at his chest
with her teeth and that black filth mixed with his blood and he was
lost forever. The elders used to tell us if we didn’t behave, then
Simeon would come and get us in our sleep.

“
They created two more after her, two sisters: Margo and
Corinne. This time they used women from the Quarters to see if
perhaps they would be easier to control. They dressed them in white
and chained them down. That’s where the name came from, that and
the fact that their eyes went almost totally white.

“
It took eight of them to produce the same effects that Simeon
had created in his grief. When they eventually succeeded, they were
drained of power and the girls were just the same as the one before
them: crazed and untameable. They kept all three locked away,
fearing them for decades before finally deciding they were
unnatural and destroying them. They cut their heads off and burned
their bodies.”

A heavy, thick
quiet fell over the car when Agatha stopped talking, and I sat
there mulling over her story. It was highly unbelievable, but then
what else was new? Agatha was no fool. If she suspected the woman I
saw was one of these whytes, then I was glad we’d left immediately.
I definitely didn’t want to meet one.

I looked back
at Oliver in the rearview and gave him a tight-lipped smile. Tess
was asleep beside him with her head resting on his shoulder. She
probably hadn’t heard a single word Agatha had said, and I was
thankful for that. Tess might not handle the thought of another
monster trying to kill us very well.

Eventually
tires hit asphalt and we had made it to the highway. A look in the
side mirror revealed nothing behind us but darkness.

“
They’re about a mile back,” Agatha said in hushed
tones.

I drew comfort
from the fact that Beatty and Otis weren’t far away. I would have
felt even safer if Cliff had been with us. Or Daniel. Especially
Daniel. A deep pang of sadness welled up inside the hollow of my
chest. I had no idea where he was, and I needed him here. Our
friends were probably dead, and I needed the strength of his arms
around me to deaden that pain.

Grief aside,
my exhaustion levels were at an all-time high. It wasn’t long
before I drifted into uneasy asleep. Oliver was gentle when he
shook me awake, but I still leapt forward, gasping for breath.

We were parked outside a single-story motel off the highway.
It bore a weather-faded billboard
advertising
color
TV and a heated pool. A pink neon sign lit the side of the building
facing the road, blinking ‘The Queen of Hearts’ at passers by. The
driver’s seat was empty.