The Marked Girl (24 page)

L
iv couldn't move.

She floated in and out of consciousness, switching from disturbing dreams to an even more disturbing reality. For chunks of time, she didn't know which was which.

When she awoke fully it was with a jolt, her body hitting hard against the ground beneath her. Except it wasn't ground, not exactly. Liv felt the surface she rested on rattle slightly as it moved, then stopped, then started again. In her bleary state, she recognized the motion of a car moving over road. She tried to stretch out her cramped legs, but they knocked against a solid wall. Her arms were twisted awkwardly behind her back, the skin of her bound wrists chafing against what felt like cheap carpeting. Her confused mind cleared enough to piece together where she was—in a car trunk.

Liv's mind immediately jumped to the countless school assemblies and movies-of-the-week she'd seen that warned about abduction. She thought of the victimized female characters, usually past-their-prime TV stars slumming it on cable. They'd be bound and gagged and stuffed in trunks, and Liv remembered
the grim lessons that followed: Never walk home alone. Never go to a second location. Liv had always secretly scoffed at these trusting, soft-looking actresses, knowing she was too smart to ever wind up like them.

So much for that theory.

Except she hadn't been tricked by a creep in a tan overcoat, she'd been . . . what? Liv tried to think. She'd been in her car with Daisy and Shannon. Daisy and Shannon! Liv twisted around, sending a shock of pain up her arms and across her shoulders. The trunk was too small to move much, but she was able to shift onto her back enough, twist her neck enough, to see behind her. The space was empty. She was alone.

The car suddenly picked up speed, rolling Liv toward the tail end of the trunk. She let out an involuntary gasp as she rolled back onto her side, then felt something hard cut into her thigh. Her phone. It was in her left pants pocket.

Liv struggled at the ties on her wrists, hoping she could maneuver one hand free to retrieve the phone. But they were bound tight with what felt like a cord. The more she struggled, the more the cord cut into her skin. She wanted to scream in frustration, especially as more memories flashed through her mind. Daisy's fingernails scraping against the fabric of the backseat as the wraths pulled her out of the car . . . Shannon's heels hitting the pavement as she tried to get away . . . the single punch she'd thrown at a large, boulder-fisted wrath who'd eventually forced a sweet-smelling white cloth over her mouth . . .

She could feel the car slowing down, making a turn.
Then stopping altogether. A car door slammed, reverberating through the walls of the trunk. After a few sickeningly long moments, she heard a metallic click, and then the lid to the trunk opened slowly.

Twisting her head, Liv could see two wraths standing behind the trunk. The gray-haired one, Chath, and another who was a bit smaller, with a blunted nose.

“Where are my friends?” Liv asked.

“I told you we should gag her,” the short one said.

Chath merely shrugged. “Doesn't matter if she screams now. No one will hear her.”

Liv looked past the wraths to the giant space behind them. The car was parked indoors, but she couldn't tell how large the room was. Was it a garage? A warehouse? Far above, large fluorescent bulbs hung from steel beams.

Chath leaned down and grabbed her roughly by her right arm. He lifted her up in a way that nearly wrenched her arm from its socket, then hoisted her over his shoulder and started to carry her across the room.

From her vantage point, Liv was able to take in more of the large interior space. Long pieces of wood and various tools lay propped against walls, and a handful of what looked like broken-down or disassembled boats were strewn across the concrete floor.

Chath carried her down a long hallway lined with wooden doors, some closed, some open. Through the open ones, Liv saw wraths. Wraths sitting and standing, laughing and talking, eating sandwiches and staring into space. More than a dozen of
them, their low, abrasive voices rising into one indistinguishable din. Chath continued all the way down the hall to the last door. He pushed it open and walked in.

The warehouse room was large and dingy, mostly empty save for some barrels and boxes pushed up against the far walls. There were no other doors leading in or out. A single lightbulb hung down from the ceiling, and the corners were shrouded in darkness.

In the back of the room, Daisy and Shannon were sitting against the metal sheeting of a wall, each of their hands clasped in shackles that were bolted to the floor.

Chath dropped Liv down onto the concrete beside Daisy and Shannon. Liv hit the ground hard and winced in pain.

“Liv!” Shannon called out, scooting across the floor as much as she could. Her clothes were dirty and torn, the right side of her face swollen. Daisy looked relatively unhurt—her hair was a mess of tangles, but there were no cuts or bruises on her face that Liv could see. Liv tried to reach for her, but her arm was wrenched back by Chath, who cut through her rope binds with a long, dirty knife. He held her right arm tightly in one large hand, opened up another rusting shackle, and clamped it down over her wrist. The chain attached to the shackle was only a few feet long, and its other end was cemented to the floor. Liv gave it one sharp tug, knowing even before she felt the resistance that she was secured tight.

Chath laughed. “There's no getting out of that until Malquin says so.” He leaned down, his face less than a foot from Liv's. “If you know what's good for you, you will do what Malquin wants, when he wants it.”

Liv stared at him, her mouth fixed in a straight line. She still worked her wrist against the metal edge of her shackle. Chath gave a half-smile and stood up. “Only trying to help,” he said, turning to leave. He shut the door behind him, leaving the girls alone. Liv heard the sound of three separate locks clicking into place.

“So . . . this is pretty bad,” Shannon said.

“Are you okay? Are either of you hurt?”

Daisy shook her head.

“No,” Shannon replied. “After I saw what they did to you, I stopped fighting. Some cars drove up to the street, and I saw them put you and Daisy in separate trunks. Then they did the same to me.”

“Did they get to Cedric? What about Merek? Or the other officer?”

Shannon looked down. “I didn't even think to look . . . I was so freaked, Liv. . . .”

“It's okay,” Liv said, reaching out to Shannon with her free hand. “I get it.” As Liv moved, she felt the bulk of her phone in her pocket. She pulled it out. “We still have this, thankfully. Either the wraths didn't see it or were too stupid to take it from me.”

“Or they figure there's no one you could call,” Shannon said.

Daisy made a slight whimpering noise, and Liv raised her eyebrow at Shannon, who looked sheepish.

“Sorry,” Shannon said, “but you saw what happened to that cop. The wrath was so fast, it was like . . . like he didn't even have a chance.”

Liv thought of Officer Bartley, and she knew Shannon was
right. If she called 9-1-1, they'd send a couple of squad cars, maybe even three or four if she was convincing enough. But unless the cops showed up with silver bullets, they'd still be no match for the number of the wraths she'd seen in the building.

“There is one person we can call,” Liv said, casting a look at the door. “I have to do it fast, before they come back.”

She tapped at her phone's screen, and it lit up her face in a bluish tint. She clicked on the maps app and saw the small warehouse they were in was close to Venice Beach.

Liv hesitated a moment, then clicked on the Recent Calls list and pulled up the last number. It was to Kat's disposable phone, from when Cedric had called her at Daisy's house. Liv hit the Call button, and almost immediately, she could hear ringing.

“Please, please pick up,” she whispered.

And then, Kat did.

The first noise Liv heard was scoffing. And then muttering.

“Kat? Kat, can you hear me?”

A pause on the other end.

“Hello?” Kat said cautiously.

“Kat. Put the phone closer to your ear. Like I showed you . . .”

Liv heard the light sound of rustling on the other end. And then Kat spoke, and her voice was clear and loud. Liv could hear what sounded like traffic in the background.

“Liv? This person driving said I am near to the address you gave me. Is Cedric there?”

Liv ignored the tightening in her chest, pushed aside the
image of Cedric lying unconscious on the pavement, his body still twitching from electric shock. “I . . . I think so.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“We were attacked.”

A sharp intake of breath. “Was it wraths?” Kat's usually cool voice rose in panic. Liv struggled not to join in as she quickly explained that the wraths had found them at Daisy's house.

“The police were there, too. They just . . . showed up, even though we didn't call them . . .” Liv's mind bounced over the events of the night.
How
had the police known to come at that exact moment? “I think, somehow, that the wraths were behind it. Maybe they planned for the police to distract Cedric, so they could get to us. It worked, mostly. Last I saw, Cedric was in the back of a squad car at Daisy's. He might be there still, or he might be somewhere here, with us. Merek, too. We're at this place in Venice. It looks like an old boat warehouse, Six Ten Rose Street—”

“I will find Cedric.”

“Wait, Kat—”

But the line went dead. Liv sighed—for someone who'd never made a phone call before that afternoon, Kat was quick to master the fast hang-up.

“Is she coming?” Shannon asked.

Liv bit her lip. “I don't know.” She pulled against her shackle, even though she knew it would get her nowhere. The chains scraped against the ground.

“Even if she was coming, what good could she do?” Shannon asked. “She may be a superteen, but she's only one superteen.
We need more than that. We need, like, an army.”

“Oh my God,” Liv murmured. “That's it. Shannon, you're a genius.” Liv started typing into the phone.

“Duh. But who are you calling now?”

Liv palmed the phone, bit her lip. “Hopefully? An army.”

Shannon craned her head, peering over Liv's shoulder and reading as she typed into the Google search bar.

“UC San Diego has an army?”

T
he first things Cedric noticed when he opened his eyes were bars—thin, dark, and crisscrossing his vision. The second thing he noticed was that he hurt. Everywhere.

He was lying on a small bench in an enclosed space, he realized. A car. Only it wasn't moving. Through the window above his head, he saw shadows and the night sky. When he sat up, his head rocked with pain.

Cedric's hands were bound in metal circlets. It took him a while to position them correctly so that he might open the car door behind him. But the handle only lifted up and down, without opening anything. The crisscrossed bars acted as a barrier between Cedric and the front of the car. He was stuck. And there were wraths outside. He tried to remember—there had been four of them, some with weapons. He pulled again and again at the door handle, with no results.

A figure lurched toward the car and wrenched open one of the front doors. A young, uniformed man—an officer—who was bleeding badly from the head. The man reached for a square device in the car and brought it to his mouth.

“Officer down, I repeat, officer down. We've got a two-four-five, multiple assailants, request for backup.”

The officer panted as he wiped blood from his face.

Cedric pushed against the bars between them, and the officer looked at him, startled.

“There are wraths out there. I can help.”

But the square device was talking back now, and the officer pulled his eyes from Cedric to listen to the far-off voices repeating numbers and directions Cedric couldn't understand. The officer's eyes closed as he listened, and he looked unsteady, like he might fall over at any moment.

“Please,” Cedric said. “You have to let me out.”

The officer once again turned his head toward Cedric. He opened his mouth to talk—and then went flying backward, out the front door of the car. One moment, he was in front of Cedric, and the next, gone.

Cedric leaned forward, his head hitting the bars. He could just barely make out the officer's legs twitching on the ground. Then he heard a
thump
and a groan, and the legs went still.

Cedric threw his shoulder against the bars, the door, the window. But he was trapped. Panic bubbled up—

A dark head popped into the front seat. “There you are.”

Kat grinned.

Quick relief fell over Cedric. He smiled back, then looked to the officer. “How hard did you hit him?”

Kat shrugged one shoulder. “Hard enough, but he will likely wake soon. Which means we need to get out of here now.”

“Liv and the others—”

“I know,” Kat broke in. “Liv managed to reach me on one of her phone devices. The wraths took her, Cedric.”

Cedric jerked up, immediately ready to fight. But even if his fists weren't stuck together, there was nothing for him to aim them at. He threw his elbow hard at the wall of thin, interlocking bars that separated the front of the car from the back. Though the metal rings dug into the skin of his wrists, feeling the impact was worth it. For a moment.

“Where?”

“Liv told me where she is,” Kat said, in a rush. “Though I do not know how to get there. The driver who brought me here left, and I do not know how to call for another.”

“If you know where she is, I can only think of one way to get us there quickly,” Cedric said, looking grimly around the car.

Kat raised one eyebrow. “You must be joking.”

“I am not in a joking mood, to be honest. I think I know how to do it, from watching Liv . . . except . . .” Cedric held up his bound wrists as explanation.

Kat leaned close to examine them. “Wait! There's a keyhole here. Which means there must be a key.”

She knelt down next to the unconscious officer and searched around, coming up with a key ring. After a few tries with the wrong keys, she finally used one to open the back door, then another to pop the latch on the metal circlets. Cedric pulled his hands free, rubbing his wrists.

After Cedric and Kat pulled the officer safely off the road and under some nearby shrubs, they searched the yard and house. Cedric's sword was missing. So was Merek.

“Maybe he was taken with the others,” Kat said.

“Maybe,” Cedric replied. But he couldn't stop his mind from stumbling over the same question. He kept picking and worrying at it like a loose tooth. “Or maybe he went with them willingly,” he finally said.

“Cedric—”

“How did the wraths know where to find us tonight? It does not make sense. The wrath who spoke to me in the woods, right before the uniforms came, he said something to me about betrayal. About being betrayed.”

Kat's eyebrows shot upward. “You think Merek betrayed us?”

Cedric walked back to the car and got inside, this time in the driver's seat. Merek's words sounded out in his head:
You have no idea what I'm capable of . . .

“Merek could have told the wraths where we were going.”

Kat got in the seat next to Cedric. She put one hand up to her temple, rubbing the skin there. “But why? Why would he do that? If Liv is our best chance at getting home, why hand her over to the wraths? Merek can be . . . challenging, but—”

“More than challenging. He has questioned me every step of the way. Of course he would try to take things into his own hands, the little—” Cedric smacked the round wheel in front of him. “Think about it. Merek argued for us to leave the museum. Not a few hours later, who led the group of wraths to the alley, forcing us to flee? He could have easily gone back to them the night the two of you returned to the museum. You separated for a while, did you not? That could have given him more than
enough time to find the wraths and hatch this plan.”

“I suppose . . .” Kat said, and sighed.

“We will deal with Merek later. First, we have to find Liv.”

Cedric gazed at the wheel before him with a sinking stomach, and Kat fixed him with an expectant stare.

“Well?” Kat finally said.

“Give me a moment.” Cedric breathed in once, deep, before putting his hands on the dangling set of keys on one side of the wheel. He tried to remember the series of actions Liv had taken each time she drove him somewhere. Moving slowly, he turned the keys, and held them there.

The metallic, churning noise sounded out. As Cedric continued pushing the keys, the noise turned into a high-pitched squeal.

“Aghh.” Kat put her hands over her ears.

Cedric grimaced and looked down at the stick near his knee. “I think it's on.” Remembering Liv's actions once again, he grabbed hold of the stick, pulling it from the
P
to the
D
position.

The car rolled forward, and Cedric remembered he had to do something with his feet. He looked under the wheel, trying to find the levers down there, when Kat yelped. Cedric whipped his head back up, just in time to see the car nearly sliding into the row of shrubs. He jerked on the wheel, and one of his feet landed on a pedal. The car lurched to a stop. Cedric tried the next pedal, and the car surged forward.

“Ah, got it now,” he said, letting out a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding in.

Kat looked less than convinced.

Beads of sweat formed along the edge of Cedric's hairline as his eyes shot from one of the car's windows to another, always watchful for movements on the darkened road.

“Liv gave me an address,” Kat said. “But how are we supposed to find it?”

Cedric glanced up at the small device that sat to his right, below the car's main window. It was nearly identical to the device he'd seen in Liv's car—the GPS she'd used to navigate on their visit to the professor.

“You have to use that.”

Kat shot him an incredulous look. “Use it how?”

Cedric shrugged. “Turn it on? It speaks directions aloud to you in a human voice, so long as you push the right button.”

“That is entirely unsettling.”

As Kat struggled with the device, Cedric gripped the wheel tightly, eyes focused on the roadway. He was afraid to move, afraid to blink. And yet at the same time, controlling the movements of the car was almost . . . exhilarating. He forced himself to concentrate, keeping his foot rigidly on the pedal near the ground, the way Liv had done.

Kat cursed at the small box more than once, until it finally chirped out the correct location, and she slumped back in her seat.

The car hit against the side of the roadway, jolting hard against a fence.

“You are sure you know what you are doing?” Kat asked.

No,
Cedric thought. “Yes.” Cedric tried to keep all of his focus on the roadway and on his own movements. He followed
the small box's instructions, and they drove into a busier, well-lit street. Pinpoints of bright, yellow light moved here and there as other cars navigated around them. Cedric tried to keep his hands steady on the wheel so Kat wouldn't pick up on the slight shaking in his fingers.

“What are we going to do?” Kat asked, in a small voice.

“First, not die in this contraption. Second, rescue Liv and the others.”

Kat was silent for a moment. “And what are we going to do about Merek? If what you say is true . . .”

Cedric gritted his teeth and stopped the car at a red light so quickly that it jerked forward. “Then we will drag him home, where he can face the punishment he deserves.”

“So you agree . . . that we need to get home? And soon?”

Cedric squared his shoulders. “We have to get Liv back first.”

“Yes, of course. We will find the wraths and get Liv back so we can go home. . . . I know you wanted to stay and determine Malquin's plan, but he has been one step ahead of us here the whole time. We had access to the portals, and then he took them. As soon as we get them back . . . I don't want to risk that happening again. Risk getting stuck here. We must get back home and fight the wraths there.”

“And leave Liv and her siblings here alone to face whatever comes for them next?”

Kat sucked in a breath. “I know you care about her. But there are more important things. Remember what our parents said? The day they gave us these?” Kat reached for the gold band that
hung from a chain around her neck. “We are different, you and I. We have great advantages, but we also have a responsibility to Caelum. Do you remember?”

“I do.”

“There was a time when I followed you and supported you without question. But that was when I knew that we had the same goal, of keeping our people safe. Do we not still?”

Cedric pursed his lips together. Kat put one hand over where his rested on the steering wheel. Their fingers blended together in the dark. “This is about more than one girl,” Kat continued. “It is about everything, Cedric. Everything that has ever mattered.”

New images rose up in Cedric's mind—Emme's laugh when she beat him at cards, his mother sewing in her sitting room, the color of the castle walls as the sun hit them every morning . . .

Liv's eyes right before he kissed her.

“So are we in agreement? As
soon
as we free Liv from the wraths, we use her to go back to Caelum?” Kat asked.

Blurred lights passed by all the windows as the car flew forward. Cedric remembered driving in the car with Liv on the way to San Diego, how she had pointed at the ocean as they'd passed by. It was the first time he'd ever seen it, a glimmering strip of blue on the right-hand side of the car.

“Isn't it beautiful?” Liv had asked, sneaking glances to catch Cedric's expression as he took in the sight for the first time.

“It is,” Cedric had responded, a tugging feeling in his chest. “But it is not home.”