The Bloom Series Box Set: Bloom & Fade (37 page)

They were to go after him as a group,
but they wanted to wait another day to prepare. Haven felt guilty
about letting Lee go in the first place, and so she decided to take
the situation into her own hands.

She didn’t say goodbye to Colton, as
much as she had wanted to. His dark, too-shaggy hair had been
sticking out of the top of his sleeping bag when Haven snuck past
his room and out of the complex. She paused briefly, debating
whether or not to invite him to go with her, but she knew the best
place for him was at the Dome. He had become an integral part of
the group, as had she, so she thought it was best that one of them
remain behind.

Besides
, thought Haven as she pulled herself up onto a horizontal
beam,
this was supposed to be
easy
.

The beam reached out over the side of
the building and extended a few feet into the air. A sudden drop of
twenty-five stories was the only thing between the steel and the
concrete parking lot far below.

Lee stood at the very edge of the
beam, facing Haven. The little girl stood in front of him, her eyes
open wide. He kept his hands firmly on her shoulders as Haven
walked slowly toward him.

“
I wouldn’t do that,” he
said.

He squeezed the girl’s shoulders and
her face turned pale. He was leeching her vitality—her very life
force. His cheeks flushed red and his eyes sparkled with new
life.

Haven was forced to stand ten feet
away from them on the beam, helpless. She meant to find out the
reason why he was suddenly back in the mix—why he had chosen now of
all times to reappear—but with each passing moment, she held out
less and less hope that he would talk.

Now that they were close, Haven could
tell that something was wrong with him. As soon as the flush of
fresh blood left his cheeks, an odd paleness sank into his skin.
The whites of his eyes darkened and black veins crept up his neck
from beneath the collar of his shirt.

Lee coughed and shook his head
violently, then he laughed.

“
This was supposed to be
an even match,” he said. His Australian accent was thick with
anger. “But look at me. Soon I’ll be useless.” He squeezed the
little girl harshly. “Just like her and the rest of the sheep down
there.” His eyes glazed over and for a moment Haven thought he fell
asleep standing up. Haven took a step forward, then his eyes
snapped open and she stopped. Lee glared at her suspiciously. “I
thought the other guy was going to come after me.
Dormer.”

Haven risked taking another small step
forward.

“
Is that why you killed
those people?” she asked. “You wanted Dormer to come and find
you?”

Lee shook his head. “That
was just a bonus to pay him back for what he did to Dane. I
needed
to kill those
people.”

As he spoke, the skin of his face
turned grey. He gasped and pulled the little girl close. All color
left her skin and her eyes rolled up as Lee drained more life from
her small body.

“
Stop it!” shouted Haven.
The harsh blue flames that preceded a violent outburst flared from
her skin and raced up and down her body.

“
I needed to do it,” said
Lee, but he was no longer talking to Haven. Whatever sickness
affected him was rapidly accelerating. The little girl’s life
energy was no longer enough to maintain his own health. “Look at
me,” he said. “What a waste. I’m lucky my abilities lasted as long
as they did. With most people they disappear right away. Go
figure.”

“
I’ll jump after you,”
said Haven. “You’re not getting away.”

He tried to smile but could not. “I
know.”

With a gentle push from Lee, the
little girl fell off the steel beam.

“
No!” screamed Haven. She
lunged for the girl and caught her by the wrist. The weight of her
body pulled Haven off the beam. She slipped over the side and
wrapped her arm around the beam at the last possible moment. The
combined weight of them both almost ripped Haven’s arm free as they
dangled high above the city. She groaned as she fought to keep her
shoulder from popping out of its socket.

“
Nice catch,” said
Lee.

He closed his eyes and fell backward
off the beam.

Haven watched his body fall toward the
ground. She turned away at the moment of impact and saw that the
little girl was looking up at her calmly. A groan of exertion
quickly turned to a scream of pain as Haven lifted the little girl
up onto the beam. She clung to it and reached down to grab Haven’s
collar with one hand, her small fingers—ineffective but
comforting—clutching to save her rescuer. Haven pulled herself up,
kicking at the air until she was able to swing her body onto the
beam. The little girl hugged her close as Haven lay on her back,
looking up at the clear blue sky above Chicago.

“
You’re safe now,” said
Haven as she gently rubbed the girl’s back. “You’re
safe.”

4

B
OOOM!

The large ceiling fan exploded into
pieces.

“
Look out!” shouted
Marius. He grabbed Corva and pulled her to the side just as one of
the massive fan blades pierced her chair and stabbed into the
concrete floor. The metal hissed from the heat of the
explosion.

BOOOM!

Fire belched down through the hole in
the ceiling and licked into the dome. Huge chunks of dirt and
concrete fell from above, crushing equipment and tables. Large
cracks split the walls near the peak.

“
What are they doing?!”
shouted Corva.

Colton looked around the room. Dormer
was on the second tier, crouched next to the bed of his injured
brother, Adsen. He watched the ceiling anxiously. Micah and Noah
ran out of the training room, their eyes wide.

Noah said something but the sound of
his voice was lost in noise as the ceiling fan housing popped out
and crashed to the middle of the dome floor. The stone fire pit in
the center of the room shattered under the weight of the huge metal
box.

“
Get back!” shouted
Colton, waving at the two boys.

They stared up at the widening hole in
the ceiling until finally Micah grabbed Noah’s sleeve and pulled
him back into the training room.

BOOOM!

All of the concrete surrounding the
peak of the dome broke away. A few large chunks of dirt fell from
the edges of the ragged hole, allowing sunlight to penetrate the
dome. A bright shaft of yellow light shot down and illuminated a
wide circle in the middle of the floor, highlighting the crushed
fire pit and the broken fan housing.

A man’s head peered over the edge of
the hole, silhouetted against the light. The outline of several
more heads appeared next to the first.

Marius growled and raised a closed
fist at the ceiling.

“
I teach them to poke
their heads in here.”

Corva pushed his arm down to his side.
“Don’t! You’ll bring down the whole roof.”

“
It’s already down!” he
bellowed.

“
I think they’re leaving,”
said Colton.

The silhouetted heads
slowly disappeared from the opening high above. A moment later, a
distant
booooom
rocked the walls of the Dome.

“
Sounds like they’re
collapsing the garage,” said Corva.

“
We will be trapped,” said
Marius.

Colton heard huge chunks of rock
crashing down on equipment in the garage, crunching metal and
grinding against the smooth walls.

A long minute of silence
followed and Colton stood slowly, brushing a layer of dust from his
face and looking up at the gaping hole in the dome ceiling. A metal
cube the size of a microwave fell through the hole. The shiny box
spun down like a thrown die cube and hit the concrete floor on one
flat side with a hollow
thooooommmm
.

Marius stood and walked toward the
cube but Corva grabbed his arm and pulled him back. He yanked his
arm away in protest but stopped when one side of the cube popped
off with a loud hiss and clattered to the floor. White steam poured
from the opening. Thin strips of glowing orange lights were barely
visible within.

“
What are those?” asked
Colton.

The steam cleared and he saw that the
cube was filled with small silver spheres, each one the size of a
baseball and encircled with a thin strip of orange light. The
orange lights pulsed slowly and the spheres started to
hum.

“
We must go,” said
Marius.

He helped Corva to her feet just as
one of the spheres flew out of the box and slapped against his
back. Marius cursed in Russian and grabbed at the skin between his
shoulder blades where the sphere was pressing against him, but he
couldn’t reach it. Corva spun him around and grabbed the sphere.
She pulled it away from his skin and Marius screamed—a three-inch
needle protruded from the sphere and was covered with Marius’s
blood.

Clear liquid dripped from the end of
the needle.

“
It injected something
into him,” said Corva.

“
Run!” shouted
Colton.

The rest of the spheres hummed loudly.
They hovered slowly in the air above the metal cube. The strip of
orange light on the spheres pulsed so rapidly that it became a
solid strip. Dust on the floor beneath some of the lower spheres
moved outward from their built-in propulsion systems.

Colton pushed Marius and Corva toward
the dormitory hallway next to the Grove entrance—they might be able
to make it to one of the apartment rooms and seal the door behind
them. He turned back to look at the training room. Two spheres hit
the swinging door and pushed it open slowly, their orange strips of
light glowing brightly as their tiny engines struggled with
exertion. Colton wanted to stop and go back for Noah and Micah but
Marius grabbed his shoulder.

“
Something is wrong,” he
said as they ran. “I try to make the flame, but cannot.”

He held up his hands and clenched his
fists—usually covered in bright orange flame when there was
trouble—but there was no fire, just a faint orange glow on his
palms.

Colton stopped when they reached the
dormitory hallway and turned to face several rapidly approaching
spheres. He focused on the space directly in front of him and
waited to detect the electrical fields of the spheres as they
approached. If he was lucky, he could drain them of power before
they got too close.

He wasn’t lucky.

The closest sphere shot toward him in
a blur and smacked into his chest. Colton reached down to swat it
away and the needle broke off in his skin. The orange light in the
sphere dimmed as the lifeless ball of metal rolled away on the
floor. Colton pinched the tiny edge of needle protruding from the
center of his chest and slowly pulled out three inches of thin
steel.

Another sphere flew past him before he
could swat it down and turned the corner of the hallway. A moment
later, Corva screamed.

Colton looked up at the second tier of
the dome and saw that the spheres were circling over the cots that
lined the inner wall. Dormer was crouched under one of the flimsy
beds with his brother Adsen beside him.

One of the patients stood and tried to
run but as soon as he moved a sphere shot toward him and slapped
into his neck. The man screamed and fell to the ground.

Dormer stood and held out an open palm
toward the rest of the floating spheres, trying to use his
formidable Conduit power to drain them of energy, just as Colton
had done—but they were too fast. The strip of orange light
encircling their centers glowed intensely and streaked trails
through the air as the spheres sought out and burrowed against the
remaining inhabitants of the Dome.

Before he knew what hit him, Dormer
lowered his arm and looked behind his left shoulder at one of the
humming spheres. He pulled it slowly away from his skin and threw
away the long needle that had stuck into his back.

Colton stepped to the side as Marius
and Corva walked back from the dormitories.

“
It takes your ability,”
she said to Colton. “We’re useless.”

Colton reached out and grasped for any
kind of energy he could find. He tried for the heat from the lights
around the room and even for some electrical current coursing
through the wires buried in the dome walls, but he could draw only
a fraction of what was available.

A loud crackle of blue electricity
echoed through the hole in the ceiling.

“
Now what?” asked
Marius.

Everyone in the cavernous room stood
and looked up as thick strands of piercingly bright, blue lightning
shot through the hole in the ceiling and probed the inner wall of
the dome. The ends of the lightning strands burned jagged black
streaks in the smooth concrete wall as they crawled down toward the
floor.

Colton tried to ignore the beauty of
the controlled chaos but was mesmerized at the way the lightning
arced down through the hole and moved over the surface of the
walls—almost like the searching, slow-moving tentacles of a huge
octopus.