The Blood Guard (The Blood Guard series) (20 page)

“Kid?” my mom said. “That doesn’t sound right. They have a woman from Brazil, a Pure they smuggled in.” She probed the wound above her eye and winced. “Unless you’re telling me they have
two
Pure?”

“No, the boy isn’t a Pure, he’s just some foster kid who got caught up in this,” Dawkins said. “We cut the power before they were able to hurt him. But if they have a Pure here, where is she?”

“That shawl,” I said, remembering. “You said we’d just missed her.”

“They must have had her ready for the Eye once they were done testing.” Looking more worried than I’d ever seen him, Dawkins rested a hand on Greta’s shoulder. “We need that door open now, Greta. We’ve got to get to this woman before they run her through that device.”

“But weren’t they going to run Sammy through it first?” I asked. And then, when I saw the look on Dawkins’ face, I added, “Not that that’s a good thing!”

“They know we’re here,” Dawkins said, “so they’re not going to pussyfoot around with test subjects. They’ll take the Pure’s soul as soon as they’re able.”

“It’s a good thing the power is out, then,” Gaspar said.

There was a soft click, and Greta cracked the door open an inch.

In the empty hallway, there was a flicker as the red emergency generator bulbs dimmed and went dark.

“What’s going on?” I whispered.

Dawkins swung the cell door open, and we carefully edged out into the pitch-black corridor. “The only reason the emergency generator would cut out,” he whispered, “is i
f
—
”

With a crackle of electricity, the hallway was bathed in white light.

The generators were back on.

C
H
A
PT
E
R
26
:

THE EYE OF THE NEEDLE

D
awkins ran to the double doors at the corridor’s end.

He threw himself against them, then fell back, saying, “Barred from the other side.” Raising his fists, he slammed them against the wire-reinforced glass of one of the windows to get the attention of the people inside. “The facility is surrounded!” he shouted to them. “Stop what you’re doing and come out with your hands where we can see them!”

“You brought help?” Greta’s dad asked. “The place is surrounded?”

“No,” Greta said, frowning and shaking her head. “Dawkins called somebody, but they were too far away to get here in time. We came alone.”

“This is where one of those Tesla guns would come in handy,” I said. I went to the other door and looked in.

The room was small. In its center was the gurney, but now, instead of Sammy, a woman was strapped to it. She was younger than my mom, but not by a whole lot. And she was obviously freaked out of her mind, looking from person to person, talking nonstop, probably pleadin
g
—
t
hough no one in the room paid her any attention.

At the foot of the table was Sammy’s foster father, Dr. Warner, and next to him the petite blonde woman who was his wife. Beside her was the Bend Sinister agent called Donald and another guy with dark hair and a goatee. They were holding onto Sammy, who looked terrified.

At the head of the gurney was a man I hadn’t noticed from above, a man whose face was completely concealed by a red mask.

“What
is
that thing?” Greta whispered. “It’s horrible!”

The mask
moved
, squirming on his face like it was alive, rippling and changing shape with each breath the man took. One moment the mask was long and narrow, the nose and cheeks pointy beneath writhing hair like barbed wire; the next, the nose curled in upon itself, flattened, and disappeared entirely. Another moment, and the jaw and brow widened, thickened, the eyeholes vanishing into folds of flesh as the cheeks swelled up. The shifting never stopped, the mask slithering around the man’s head like a living nightmare. Watching it squirm made me sick to my stomach, but I couldn’t look away.

The only part of the mask that
never
changed was a large almond-shaped third eye just above the eyeholes. It was closed, but I could guess pretty easily what it was: The Perceptor. The neon green eye Dawkins had said was the Bend Sinister equivalent of a Verity Glass.

If the man in the mask looked at Greta with the Perceptor, I wondered, would he see the blindingly bright burning of her soul? Would he realize that my friend was one of the Pure he was looking for, and come after her next? Would he kill her?

I shoved Greta away from the glass.

“Hey!” she griped, shoving me back. “What are you doing?”

“Sorry,” I said, “but it’s too horrible! I, um, can’t bear to watch.”

By that time, my mom and Dawkins had blocked her from view. “Ronan’s right,” he said. “This is exactly the sort of thing I wanted to protect you two from by leaving you in the car.”

Greta’s dad shielded her with his body, but I could still see. The man in the mask reached up and touched something on his face.

Slowly, the third eye inched open. It burned a sickly electric green.

My breath died in my throat. No wonder the Warner’s first foster kid had been terrified by this mask. No wonder Sammy was afraid of this guy.

Then our view was blocked by another face: Ms. Hand.

She must have been inside the room the entire time. Smiling, she looked at each of us, and then she caught my eye. She mouthed a single word.

“What did she say?” Greta asked from behind me.

“Watch,” I whispered. “She said, ‘Watch.
’
”

She moved away in time for me to see Mr. Warner administer an injection to the woman on the gurne
y
—
s
ome kind of sedative, I guessed, because she quieted down and seemed to fall asleep.

Behind the woman, Mrs. Warner moved to a control panel and flipped a lever. That searing net of red light again crisscrossed the Eye of the Needle. Dr. Warner screwed the silver Conceptacle into place, and the people around the gurney stood back.

“We can’t just stand here!” I shouted. “We have to
do
something.”

But it was too late: Dr. Warner was already pushing the metal table through the Eye. As we watched in horror,
the device did what it had been invented to do: it combed the
woman’s soul out of her body.

Whatever sedative they’d given her didn’t matter: Once the process started, she woke up and began thrashing and screaming as the gurney rolled through the hoop.

Sammy screamed, to
o
—
a
long wailing cry that made me want to cover my ears.

And then the woman’s scream abruptly cut off and she went still, her back arched, a fine white smoke wafting out of her open mouth. She looked dead, but as we watched, her body slumped down again, and I could see her chest rise and fall as she breathed.

The Head raised a hand and closed the Perceptor, and Mrs. Warner flipped the lever. The net of light in the hoop disappeared in a burst of static.

It had taken less than a minute.

While Dr. Warner removed the Conceptacle and packed it into a padded steel container, Donald handed Sammy over to his foster mother, Mrs. Warner. She pulled him in close for what might have looked like a hug if she hadn’t just tried to sacrifice him. He struggled, but she clasped him tight.

“What’s happening?” Greta asked from behind me.

“They took that woman’s soul,” I said. “They did it.”

Donald and the goateed man carried the padded steel container through an open door on the opposite side of the room, while the Head, the Warners, and Ms. Hand watched them go. I pounded my fist on the glass, and the Head looked over and stared at me while the thing covering his face pulsed and contorted.

That was when Sammy broke free.

He bit his foster mother’s hand, ducked past Ms. Hand, and threw himself at the door. There was the noise of a metal bolt moving, and something scraped away, and then Ms. Hand was on him again. She gripped Sammy’s shirt and flung him backward.

But he’d done enough.

Dawkins and Ogabe pushed open the doors, and the metal crossbar that had been blocking them clattered to the floor.

Backing away, Ms. Hand shouted, “Go!” and the Head and the Warners fled out the far exit leaving Sammy behind.

On the other side of the gurney stood Ms. Hand, the
blade of her drawn sword against the unconscious woman’s
neck. “Stop where you are, or I will kill this Pure.”

“Haven’t you done enough to that poor woman?” Dawkins asked, but he did as instructed and paused midstep. So did Ogabe.

Ms. Hand beamed at me. “It was so kind of you to bring us Evelyn,” she said. “I feared we’d lost him entirely, but thanks to you, my mission is complete.”

“Why do you want to kill him?” Dawkins asked. “Why does a dopey thirteen-year-old kid matter so much to the Bend Sinister?”

“
Kill
him?” she said, and chuckled. “No, we never wanted to kil
l
—
”

Something struck her in the face.

Ogabe had thrown his head.

Ms. Hand flinched and raised her sword. In that moment, Ogabe’s body swept the unconscious woman up into his arms and backpedaled down the hall. His head rolled off the gurney and to the floor.

“Bree, Gaspar, Greta,” Dawkins said, “chase down that soul. Ronan and I will take care of business here.”

My mom, Greta, and her dad slid past Dawkins and charged after the Warners and the Head.

“You will be too late,” Ms. Hand said, coming around toward us, slashing the air with her sword.

Her foot connected with something, and Ms. Hand glanced down. With a cry of disgust, she swung back her leg, and kicked Ogabe’s head like a soccer ball. It bounced off the open doors and rolled after him down the corridor.

“You have a longsword,” Dawkins said, stepping around the table toward her. “And all I have are my good looks. Hardly seems fair to you.”

“Come closer,” Ms. Hand said, jabbing the blade forward, “and we’ll see how your looks fare.”

“Tempting!” Dawkins replied. “Yet I think I’ll decline your kind offer. At least until I’ve found some means of defending myself.”

Ms. Hand circled around toward Dawkins, stepping over Sammy, who was crouched in a ball on the floor, probably figuring the little kid was no threat to he
r
—
i
f she’d even noticed him at all.

And then he launched himself against the back of her knees in a flying tackle.

She grunted in surprise and flung her hands out to break her fall.

Her sword skittered away on the tile.

Sammy was on it a moment later. Sword in hand, he backed away from her. “Who’s the boss now, huh?” he asked.

“Give that to me, Samuel,” Ms. Hand said as she got to her feet. “It is not too late to make up with your parents. To prove yourself to them.”

“
They should prove themselves to
m
e
!” Sammy shouted. And then he tossed the sword my way. “Ronan, catch!”

It wasn’t a bad throw, but I never had a chance.

Ms. Hand lunged sideways across the gurney, catching the sword by the hilt and sweeping the blade through where my arm would have been if I’d reached for it.

I ducked and slid around the gurney to Sammy’s side.

“Sorry about that,” he said. “Sorry about everything.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I told him, leaning away from the point of Ms. Hand’s sword and pulling him with me. “Let’s just back up until we’re out of her reach.”

“We’ve got no place to back up
to
,” Sammy said.

We knocked against something bumpy. I felt around behind m
e
—
k
nobs and dials and a leve
r
—
t
he control panel. Nothing I could use to block Ms. Hand’s blade.

“I was never supposed to kill you, Evelyn,” Ms. Hand said with that cold smile of hers. “But sometimes accidents happen.” She raised her sword.

Behind her, Dawkins was working his way around the gurney, a metal surgical tray in his hand. But he was too far away to reach us, too far away to stop her.

I was unarmed, but
a Blood Guard finds weapons in whatever he has at hand
. So as she slashed down, I grabbed the only thing within reach.

The Eye of the Needle.

I swung it forward, and her sword bit deep into the segmented ring.

The blade stuck. Grunting, Ms. Hand twisted it back and forth. Before she could pull it free, I realized that what was poking me in the back was the lever Mrs. Warner had used, and I flipped it up once more.

The Eye of the Needle lit up, and the web of red beams wove themselves through the empty space at the center of the hoop. The guy who’d called it beautiful was on to somethin
g
—
u
p close, the crisscrossed net of brilliant light was like nothing I’d ever seen.

But then something went wrong: the beams began to stutter and break up, and tendrils of red light crackled out of the device like stray bolts of lightning, licking up along the sword blade and engulfing Ms. Hand.

Her body went rigid, her straw-colored hair standing up straight, sparks of red chasing themselves across her teeth as she stared, grimacing, into my eyes. Her face and hands slowly grew brighter and hotter, until she seemed to blaze with energy, like the white-hot sword she still held. With a final sizzle, she burst into a coarse gray rain of ash and pattered to the floor.

With a loud ragged gasp, I finally took a breath.

“Ronan?” Dawkins gently touched my shoulder. “You can turn off the juice now.”

I cranked the lever back and it was over. Ms. Hand’s sword remained wedged in the Eye, electricity snapping from its hilt as it cooled.

Dawkins toed the ash pile. “Live by the sword, die by the sword,” he said. And then he reached up and wrenched the blade free.

Sammy was trembling and wild-eyed. “She’s gone?” he asked, gesturing at the ashes.

“I think pretty definitely yeah,” I said.

“Friend,” Dawkins said to Ogabe, who stood in the doorway, holding the woman and his head in his arms, “I’m going to need you to stay here and make sure nothing else happens to this Pure. Ronan and I will go after her soul.”

Ogabe gave us a thumbs-up.

“And Sammy? Greta? I want you to stay here with Ogabe.”

Sammy looked at Ogabe, whose disembodied face gave him a grin, and said, “Sure, I’ll stay here with Greta and the headless dude.”

Just before we went through the door the Bend Sinister had taken, Sammy called out, “And Ronan? I’m really sorry abou
t
—
”