The Bloom Series Box Set: Bloom & Fade (61 page)

“
It’s okay,” she said, and
looked into his eyes. “I’m glad you told me.” In a way, it was good
to know that there were people out in the world who wouldn’t sell
their souls because they were simply “doing their jobs”. In another
way, her parents were still dead, and that meant there were people
out there in the world who enjoyed inflicting pain. For the time
being, Haven chose to believe the world was filled with more good
than bad, even though, recently, all of the evidence pointed in the
other direction. She chose to look at it like that because it was
the only way to keep from completely losing her mind.

“
We’re almost there,” said
Roku.

Haven looked ahead as the Jeep left
the desert and hit smooth asphalt. The outskirts of civilization
rose up around them—abandoned buildings and industrial lots filled
with rusty machinery and old trucks. A few miles away, downtown
Billings awaited.

“
Good,” said Bastian.
“Let’s refuel and hit the highway.”

Haven leaned over and put a hand to
Marius’s forehead. His skin was burning up but he shivered, even
under the bright midday sun. His eyelids opened and he smiled when
he saw her. He said something in Russian and before Haven could ask
what he meant, he closed his eyes again and fell asleep.

“
Please hurry,” she said
to Roku. She wanted Marius to see Corva one last time before Fade
ran its course. She did her best to push the thought of burying
them together out of her mind, but it was useless. All she saw when
she closed her eyes was a row of graves, all lined up next to
Elena’s in the Grove. Etched into each one was the name of someone
she loved.

37

T
he three soldiers guarding the dormitory hallway didn’t try
to stop Colton as he approached. He carried the small black duffel
bag confidently and looked right at them when he passed. He could
feel them staring at him and fought the urge to quicken his pace.
Finally he was past the kitchen and at the fork in the hallway.
Colton turned left and followed the hall until he reached Marius
and Corva’s room.

He spun the wheel, pushed open the
door, and went inside. June stood against the wall with an iron
frying pan in her hand, ready to bring it down on his head. She let
out a relieved sigh when she saw it was him and tossed the pan onto
an empty chair.

“
You’re lucky you aren’t
one of them. I almost flattened your head.”

“
Thanks for
double-checking,” said Colton. He went quickly to Corva’s bed and
knelt down, then unzipped the duffel bag and pulled out a handful
of capped syringes.

“
What are those?” asked
June.

“
The cure.” He handed one
to her and pulled off the protective cap covering the needle.
“Here, take it.”

“
What?! You’re
crazy.”

Colton showed her his arms, now
completely free of black veins. He pulled down his shirt collar so
she could see the faint grey outlines of the veins that had once
been pitch black.

“
Good enough for me,” she
said. She inserted the needle into a vein in the crook of her arm
and slowly pushed in the plunger. “It burns.”

“
Yeah,” said Colton. “It
gets better. In a minute you’re going to feel
really
good. You should probably sit
down.”

“
It’s already started,”
said June. Her eyes crossed and uncrossed, then she sat down
heavily on the nearest chair and right in the frying pan. She
didn’t notice.

“
What’s going on?” asked
Noah. He had been hiding under a cot and stuck his head out to look
up at Colton.

“
Hey Noah,” said Colton.
“How are you feeling?”

Noah shrugged and
scratched at the floor shyly. Colton wanted to ask him how he
managed to use his ability while infected with Fade. He wanted to
know how Noah was able to use his ability at
all
, given that no Source or Con
ever manifested their power before they were at least sixteen years
old. The black veins that had been so prominent in Colton’s skin
were only thin lines in Noah’s, and had been since he was first
infected. His body had something extra to fight off the infection,
even though Colton was certain that Fade would eventually win in
the end.

“
We found some medicine
that’s going to make everyone better,” said Colton. “Come on out
here and we’ll all take it together.”

Noah crawled out and sat on the
cot.

Colton prepared another syringe and
gently turned Corva’s face toward him. The skin on her cheeks was
almost completely purple-black, and when he lifted her eyelids he
only saw onyx orbs with red streaks running through them. Her arm
was cold as ice as he rolled up her sleeve and found the biggest
vein beneath her skin. He put the needle in slowly, watching for a
reaction. Her breathing quickened and then stopped. The beating
pulse that had been so clearly visible in her neck was
still.

He injected the cure and held his
breath with her, afraid that if he filled his lungs it would curse
everything. The needle was black when he removed it from her skin.
Her back arched up suddenly and she screamed. Colton put his hands
on her shoulders and pushed her back down to the bed. She stared at
him from behind strands of wild, white hair. Her eyes were no
longer black.

“
You’re going to be okay,”
said Colton.

Her back arched up again, too strongly
for Colton to press down, and then she collapsed. Her eyelids
fluttered closed and she let out a deep, contented sigh. Colton
felt for a pulse on her neck—weak, but steady, and her skin was
already warming.

“
Will she be okay?” asked
June. She hovered over Colton’s shoulder, looking down at
Corva.

“
I think so,” he said. He
picked up some syringes and handed them to June. “Here. For them.”
He nodded toward the five comatose people on the cots around the
room—the other survivors from the medical facility.

Colton administered the cure to Noah
while June took the syringes and, one by one, injected the others.
None of them were as bad off as Corva, but it would not have been
long before Fade ran its full course. Colton sat heavily on the
ground, holding Corva’s clammy hand, and closed his
eyes.

They did it. They
survived. And it was all thanks to Adsen, a man who Colton thought
had been trying to perfect his own creation—his virus that Alistair
meant to unleash upon the world. There would be a nice, fat steak
in Adsen’s future, Colton was sure of it.
Ten
steaks, if he wanted them. There
was no way to thank him enough.

A scream echoed down the long hallway.
Colton stood up, his eyes fixed on the door as the scream tapered
off into silence. A moment later, it started again, quiet at first,
and then louder, like a demented siren cranking to full
power.

“
It’s Adsen,” he said, and
ran out of the room.

The hallway had never seemed so long.
Colton’s legs felt as if they were moving too slowly—like his own
body did not want him to go any farther.

When he finally ran out of the hall
and into the dome room, he immediately wished he had stayed
away.

Kamiko stood in the middle of the room
near the shattered fire pit, her skin shimmering with dark blue
flame. Long, electric legs of lightning stretched from her back and
held Adsen twenty feet off the floor. They spun him in the air
slowly, like a spider cocooning its prey in slow motion. The ends
of the legs crackled over his skin, leaving black char marks in
their wake.

In her madness, Kamiko had released
her energy with no consideration for anyone else in the room. Two
of the three soldiers that had survived the earlier attack lay in a
heap behind her. Their armor was burnt and fused with their skin.
Thick smoke rose from their bubbling face-masks.

Adsen let out another ear-piercing
scream as one of the legs brushed over his chest.

Colton ran down the corridor of
shelves toward Kamiko, blind to everything else. For the first time
since he had been infected, he felt the presence of his ability. As
he ran, he drew from Kamiko’s energy. It radiated from her body and
seeped into the room, and Colton took it in and stored it, letting
it fill him like a charging battery.

He was only a few feet away from her
when a rifle cracked him in the skull and he tumbled to the ground.
Colton’s world threatened to go dark but he fought to stay
conscious. A soldier stepped out from behind a metal shelf and
stood over him. He brought his rifle up slowly. Colton knew he was
going to shoot. The soldier racked a round into the chamber, then
rested the butt of the rifle gently against his shoulder. He let
out a deep breath as his finger found the trigger and started to
squeeze.

Colton closed his eyes but
no shot came. Instead there was a long
whuuuUMPH
, followed by a short
scream. He opened his eyes and the soldier was gone. He lay in a
heap on the other side of the room. Suddenly Dormer was there,
helping Colton to his feet. He was a little paler than usual, but
the deep cut on his head was almost completely healed.

“
Let’s get him down,” he
said.

Colton nodded and together they ran at
Kamiko. She turned to them at the last second. Two of the lightning
legs holding Adsen detached from his skin and disappeared into her
body. Colton reached out for her neck and the strands shot out and
slammed into his chest.

But he had been ready. He focused
everything he had on absorbing her energy. There was so much raw
power in her attack that he knew he couldn’t hold out for long.
Dormer stood a few feet away, fighting against the same kind of
attack. The long bolts of lightning held the two men in
place.

Adsen screamed once more, and then was
silent.

Dormer looked up at him and his
concentration was broken. Kamiko’s energy surged into his torso and
he launched back into the air. He smacked into the dome wall and
slid down to the floor, unconscious.

Colton yelled and pushed forward,
ignoring the sensation of pain that was slowly spreading out from
his shoulders and down his spine. He knew Kamiko was overloading
his system—knew that she was forcing more energy into his body than
he could disperse. If he didn’t break free, eventually his ability
would simply stop working and he would melt from the
inside-out.

Kamiko’s eyes burned brighter than
Colton had ever seen. Her black hair floated around her head in
silken waves.

“
I don’t want to hurt
you,” she said.

“
You sure don’t act like
it,” said someone directly behind her.

Kamiko turned quickly as June grabbed
her face. Two black and blue energy spheres blossomed from June’s
palms and enveloped Kamiko’s head. The spheres exploded and Kamiko
flew backward. The lightning sprouting from her back and the fire
covering her skin instantly vanished.

Adsen fell to the floor and hit the
hard concrete with a dull thud. He looked at Colton with glassy
eyes. Adsen smiled—a smile full of peace; a smile of a man content
with his own personal redemption. The light faded from his eyes and
Colton knew he was dead.

Kamiko lay on the ground twenty feet
away, groaning. June and Colton ran at her, their fists humming
with built-up energy. They were still ten feet away when Kamiko
screamed. A blue sphere of solid energy formed around her body.
Colton and June stopped short, just outside the sphere. Kamiko was
barely visible within. She stood slowly, stumbled and fell, then
stood again.

Her eyes burned with rage as she
looked first at June, then at Colton.

“
You made a promise,” she
said.

“
What?” said June. She
turned to Colton. “What is she talking about?”

Kamiko’s eyes shifted back to June and
Colton remembered the deal he had made. Dormer groaned and tried to
sit up against the wall. Kamiko’s gaze drifted over to him and the
sphere flared out, widening in diameter.

June pushed her hand through the
barrier and screamed. One of the lightning strands shot out of the
barrier and hit her like a truck. She skidded back across the floor
and slammed to a stop against the rubble of the fire
pit.

“
Don’t hurt them,” said
Colton. He held up his palms and let his built-up energy drain
visibly from his palms as he stepped toward Kamiko. “I’ll go with
you.”

She smiled at him like a girl who had
just been asked to the school dance. For a split second she was
Kamiko the girl, and not Kamiko the psychopath.

The sphere disappeared in the blink of
an eye and the lightning returned, arcing out from her back to grab
at the inner walls of the dome. She beckoned Colton over. He went
to her and she wrapped her arms around him, hugging him close. She
rested her head on his shoulder and sighed happily.

“
Hold on tight,” she
said.

Colton wrapped his arms around her as
their feet slowly lifted off the floor. The lightning scraped along
the surface of the dome wall like the inside of a plasma globe. It
carried them up toward the hole in the ceiling and out into the
sunlight. Colton looked down as Kamiko set them at the edge of the
hole. Down in the darkness, he saw June crawling across the floor
toward Dormer. She reached him and looked up at Colton.