The Takeover (38 page)

Time to finish this,
I thought. Ropte retreated toward the windows as I lunged.

The splintering door cut off all thoughts of success. Guards piled into the room from a dark hallway. There seemed to be far more than the seven I’d expected.

Dark hallway?
I glanced up to see that the lights in this conference room were also off, though with the fighting and the light from the window, I hadn’t noticed. The screen that had once held images from the security cameras was black.

Someone had activated the relays—and maybe left them off. What that could mean for us, I could only hope.

A bullet from one of the guards slammed into my chest, ramming me again into the wall. My shield held, and I bounced off the wall, bringing my sword against Ropte’s, hooking his sword up and away from his grasp, leaving him wide open. Too bad we’d need him later. Rejecting the urge to slaughter him, I turned my blade flat and slammed it into the side of his head. He crumpled to the floor and stayed down.

I turned back to oncoming guards. There was no way past them. Jace had jumped away from Stefan and was battling three guards at the same time. Blood drenched his chest. Next to him, Keene slammed a few heads together. Tihalt wielded his laser, accidentally slicing through a guard as if he was nothing but air.

Bullets flew into me. One pierced my shield, ripping up the surface of my arm to my shoulder. Pain made me want to vomit. Keene threw a guard into a man that was targeting Jace. Stefan picked up a fallen guard’s gun.

We weren’t going to make it.

And then I felt him come through the door.

Ritter.

GUARDS WENT FLYING AS RITTER
burst into our midst. Cort and Dimitri immediately followed him. I had no idea how they’d gotten inside the building or how long they’d been here, but they already looked worn, as if they’d fought their way down a hallway full of Emporium soldiers. Ritter didn’t carry an assault rifle, and the only way he’d have abandoned it was if he’d run out of ammunition. Maybe that explained the repeated gunshots I’d heard.

Had Ritter fought his way into the building after all? If Ritter had fallen back to one of the alternate plans, where were the New York Renegades and the ex-Emporium Unbounded? I’d even welcome Oliver—we could use one of his illusions about now. I still felt nothing beyond this room, so I had no idea what awaited us in the hallway. Or how many we’d lost.

I couldn’t think about that now.

Ritter looked once in my direction, taking me in with hungry eyes.
I’m okay,
I thought to him, but his shield was too strong for me to get through without expending energy I didn’t have. But he’d be able to see I was fine, despite the shallow furrow up my arm that drenched me with blood.

Even as I had the thought, his shield opened a crack, and I was in. I saw his invitation to channel his ability, and also felt his agreement when I suggested I stick with Jace in case he needed backup. Jace had been on ops before, but not like this. Not with his father trying to kill him. Besides, Ritter would fight better if he weren’t so closely linked to what I was doing; his protective urge where I was concerned might distract him.

There was no time for a reunion. More Emporium Unbounded were pouring into the room after them. At such close quarters, guns had mostly been abandoned in the fear of hitting a comrade. Or they were kicked away by opponents. A female Emporium soldier threw down an empty pistol. Knives and swords flashed. The two Emporium soldiers nearest me had drawn their swords, but when they saw our reinforcements and no one behind me, they reached for their guns instead. I dived between them, coming up fast and bashing one in the neck with my sword. He hit the ground before drawing his gun. The other man blocked my next swing, but not my kick at his groin, which gave me an opening to thrust my sword through his middle. I’d never really understood the appeal of swords before, but I did now. They were so very deadly.

I whirled to face two more combatants, trying to pierce their mental shields at the same time. If I could flash light into their minds, I could even the odds a little. But they were at full alert, and like Stefan and Ropte, their shields were strong. Until I could get somewhere away from the fighting, where I didn’t have to concentrate on staying alive, I wouldn’t be able to break through.

I rammed my sword into one guard, but he clutched it as he fell, and I had to let it go or be skewered by his comrade. Backpedaling as fast as I could, I was relieved when Cort took out the guard, his sword sinking deep into the man’s side.

A few more Unbounded came through the door, one heavily wounded. He took only a few steps before collapsing to the ground. The others plunged into the battle.

“Erin!” I turned to see Ritter fighting his way toward me. Only two men separated us when he took out another sword from his back sheath—my sword—and tossed it to me.

I grabbed it in time to slash at another opponent. Over the man’s shoulder, I spied Tihalt struggling to his feet after an apparent fall. Keene was turned away, finishing off another attacker, when his father raised his laser to slice across Keene’s torso. Keene would never move out of the way in time.

“No!” Cort shouted. He lunged at Tihalt, pushing his brother away. The laser ripped through Cort, severing his head from his neck. For a moment, I thought I was seeing things because he looked exactly the same, but then his body started to crumple and his head tipped. Tihalt grinned, his face covered in gore, his eyes glinting with triumph. He was already slashing down with another thrust that would severe Cort’s remaining two focus points. Three parts severed. There would be no coming back from that.

I threw back another guard and rushed toward them. Keene caught himself and turned, his mouth open in a silent scream. Down came Tihalt’s laser.

The light pierced Cort’s body, carving through it with the same ease it had shown before.

No!

Grief rose up to meet me, along with another guard. I feinted and slammed into him, my sword piercing his heart.

Power pulsed around Keene, and Tihalt slammed backward against the wall, his head twisting violently to the side. Keene raised the sword in his hands. Tihalt cursed him, blood and spittle flying from his mouth. Keene sneered at him as his sword cut through the man’s neck as effortlessly as the laser had, driven by his ability. He raised the sword again.

I pushed another soldier aside. “We need him!”

Keene turned and looked at me, his eyes dilated and his face rigid. “No, we don’t. This ends here.” He brought the sword down through Tihalt’s torso, severing it completely.

I looked away in time to see Mari hovering in the hall by the doorway. My grief over Cort turned to an aching numbness as I saw her. She was alive! Mari slipped a knife between the ribs of a soldier at the door and stepped through, her life force burning with welcome. Completely unshielded.

I reached out and shifted next to her, lunging for the panel holding the controls for the room’s electrical field. I slammed my fist into it, and the red web in the room vanished.

All at once, I felt them—more than a hundred life forces crammed into the wide hallway on this floor, locked in the ancient struggle for life.

“So many,” I whispered.

Mari looked at me, her face pale and haunted. Streaks of red ran down her cheeks, and her pants looked as if she’d wiped blood from her hands repeatedly. In her mind, I glimpsed how everything had gone wrong. She’d set off the relays and shifted Ritter and a few of the others into Tihalt’s lab one floor below. They’d fought their way up here, but soldiers already filled this hallway, with more coming behind them. They’d continued their desperate fight, protecting Mari while she shifted more Renegades inside the building. She’d made trip after trip, bringing everyone she could: Ava, members from the New York cell, the thirty-four former prisoners. Those were the life forces that now struggled in the hallway against the Emporium hit teams.

All along, Mari hadn’t known if Keene—or any of us—still lived.

“Keene,” she whispered.

I thought it was a question, but she vanished and appeared across the room, startling two men attacking Keene. In front of them, Ritter and Dimitri stood back to back, battling a ring of Emporium soldiers. Jace was near the couches, once again clashing with Stefan, but another guard was interfering, wearing Jace down. He looked beaten and resigned, and his mind raged with fury and terror.

Don’t think about Cort,
I told myself
. Focus on Jace.
I headed toward him, dodging around the soldiers fighting Ritter, slashing two of their legs as I passed. Stefan turned as I approached, beating me back with his sword.

“Are you really my daughter?” he growled.

“You’ll never know,” I sneered through the numbness encasing my heart, “but I would rather die than have you as a father.”

“I can help with that.” He sliced hard, risking his hands to twist away my sword as he’d done in our earlier bout. This time I held onto it, bringing it down to block him. He lunged for me again, but channeling Mari, I shifted behind him. Both hands on my hilt, I smashed my elbow into his head. He collapsed. I hit him again to make sure he’d stay out.

Jace dispatched the other guard, but two more escaped past Ritter and came up to meet him. There were fewer opposing soldiers standing now, and Ritter and Dimitri were pushing them toward the door. By the time Jace and I managed to fight our way free, they had all disappeared into the dark hallway. Agonized screams and cries met my ears.

I ran to the door and into the hall. It wasn’t as dark as I’d first thought, and my eyes readily adjusted, but it seemed impossible to believe the mounds of bodies clogging up the hallway—far more than the hundred life forces I’d detected earlier. Many were full of bullet holes and only temporarily dead or passed out, still retaining faint life force glows. But far too many had been slaughtered. Permanently dead. One woman I recognized from the New York cell: Francis Bennet, a summoner, who had recently given birth to a baby after we’d freed her from an Emporium prison. Her head lay next to her torn body, her short blond hair askew, her muddy, almond-shaped eyes forever closed.

I also recognized Jonny Carrington, my supposed half brother and Jace’s real half brother. He would no longer have to worry about his short life and not measuring up to those with the full combat ability. He’d never have to mourn again the woman he’d loved who hadn’t survived the forcing experiment.

Seeing the devastation, I didn’t know how anyone could continue fighting. Yet what other choice did we have? Near the elevator, a group of our people led by Ava blocked the stairs and the elevator. More clumps of people fought along the corridor.

A soldier leapt up to confront me, stepping on the pieces of Jonny in his eagerness. Bile filled my throat as I brought up my sword, my feet sticking on the bloodstained floor.

Where was Ritter? Why couldn’t I feel our connection? He was just . . . gone. The numbness in me spread.

I swung and ducked and swung again. The line of soldiers seemed never to end. My shield took two blows that would have flattened me, if my opponent hadn’t been as weary as I was. I was making stupid mistakes, not ones I should be making still connected to Jace, no matter how thin the thread between us. My muscles screamed with fatigue.

Finally, I spotted Ritter battling two huge men down the corridor. Two more rose up to join the fight against him. Dimitri was nowhere to be seen.

And Cort. Oh, Cort!
He was dead. Truly and permanently. I couldn’t wrap my mind or my feelings around that. Had Ritter seen? He would be devastated. Maybe that’s why he was fighting like a maniac, mowing down the enemy like a scythe through wheat.

I slammed aside a soldier and started in Ritter’s direction. But the soldier came back at me, and I had to fight him off again. A cut from his blade told me I’d let my shield drop. I tried to put it back up, but my mind was slow to react.

Then it happened. Over my opponent’s shoulder, I saw a sword from one of Ritter’s assailants slice hard into Ritter. He staggered and fell, taking a bunch of them with him.

“No!” I screamed.

I forced my attacker back with my sword and my mind, which shattered his mental barrier. Taking advantage of the breach, I flashed light into his unprotected mind and he crumpled.

Another took his place. There were too many bodies separating me from Ritter—and far too many swords around Ritter for him to survive. But I had to get to him. I wouldn’t let it end like this. We’d come too far. I reached for Mari, hoping to channel her ability, but I couldn’t find her. I could only feel Jace through our tenuous connection.

Why couldn’t I feel Ritter? I could always recognize his life force—feel him even if our minds weren’t connected. All I felt now was that horrible numbness that seemed to fill my entire body. I wanted to give up, to lie down on the ground and curl into a ball.

Ritter!
I screamed silently, searching for him. If I could feel him, I would know it was okay.

Nothing.

I shoved forward, only to be pushed back. I lost my grip on my sword. Then Dimitri was there, touching the man from behind with his healing hands that could also kill. The soldier collapsed. I grabbed for my sword, but there were no new opponents. Standing behind Dimitri were a dozen of our Renegades, some quickly finishing their last battle, while others stared with the same disbelief I felt.