Chapter 2 - Gage
My shoulder aches from the kick of the rifle even as my scope whites out.
I jerk back from the eyepiece and blink hard until the spots swimming across my vision start to clear.
When I lean in again to find her, to see what the hell just exploded through that basement, my hands are shaking too badly to hold the sight steady.
Fuck it. I need to be there. Whatever is happening in that room, I need to see it with my own eyes and have my hands free to do something about it.
I sling the rifle over my shoulder and take the narrow wooden stairs of the bell tower two at a time.
Somehow, I'm at the bottom before I've finished deciding to run, and my boots hit the floor of the nave hard enough that I stumble because I got down those stairs too fucking fast.
Brannick told me there was something different inside me, something that had been dormant until all this happened. I didn't really believe him then. It gets harder to doubt when my body keeps doing things it couldn't do a week ago.
Penny scrambles up from her spot near the door and races after me, abandoning her ball as her nails click across the old stone floor.
Outside, the ravine sits between me and the house.
There's a wooden staircase built into the hillside half a kilometer down, but I'm not wasting time running for it when I can see the wire at the top of the slope from here.
I don't know if Luna is safe, and that's enough to send me straight up the steep face.
Dry earth crumbles beneath my boots causing me to slide backward before catching myself on a root. I dig in and try again, only to lose another section of dirt and slide farther down. Frustration breaks loose, and I slam my fist into the slope above me.
The ground moves.
I freeze as a flat shelf of packed earth pushes out of the hillside where my fist hit. It's wide enough to stand on and solid enough that I can see exactly what it is without understanding how the fuck I made it. I stare at it for a second, then stop wasting time asking questions.
My boot lands on the ledge, and I focus on the dirt above me. The same pressure I've felt building inside me since Brannick started talking about magic tightens through my body. I push at it deliberately this time, and another section of earth moves. A second ledge forms above the first.
"Holy shit."
I climb onto it and push again. Another shelf forms, then another, each one giving me somewhere solid to put my boots.
A rough laugh escapes me because I'm building stairs out of a hillside with just a wish now.
Fine. I'll deal with that later. Right now I don’t care as long as it gets me to Luna faster.
The ledges keep forming as I climb. Penny bounds up behind me with her tail going hard enough to throw off her balance, convinced I've invented a new game specifically for her.
We reach the top together, and I swing over the wire divider while she squeezes underneath it.
I cross the alley and reach our back gate just as a voice carries from the street out front.
"Oi, go get Davey already! Tell him he can loot the place later for video games. We need to get these people to the warehouse."
My hand tightens around the latch. Davey. If that's the soldier who went into the basement, someone’s going to come looking for him any minute.
"Fuck."
I shove through the gate and run across the yard.
My boots hit the deck stairs hard before I slam through the back door.
For one second, everything inside the house is painfully familiar.
The dining room. The furniture. The faint scent of whatever candle Luna burned last. Every detail is exactly the way I pictured it while I was trying to get back here.
Penny doesn't share my moment. She tears past me at full speed toward her food and water bowls because surviving the end of the world has done nothing to rearrange her priorities.
I keep moving until I reach the top of the basement stairs, where my hand closes around the railing and I stop.
I don't want to go down, and that realization pisses me off enough that I nearly force myself forward anyway, but my body refuses to cooperate for another second.
I saw the flash through the scope and heard the shot, and every ugly possibility about Luna is waiting at the bottom of those stairs.
The floor trembles beneath my boots. A low groan moves through the walls as the house shifts around me and I immediately think earthquake.
It's not me, or at least I don’t think it is.
I’m not consciously putting out the same pressure I used on the hillside, but we also don’t generally have earthquakes here.
I drag in a slow breath and force the image of Luna bleeding out of my head.
Whatever this power is, if I caused this, I can't have it reacting every time fear gets the better of me.
I shove the panic down even as the floor stops moving.
Learning how to control this just moved much higher on my list, but not now.
I tighten my hand on the railing once, let go, and start down the stairs.
Relief hits so hard at the bottom that my knees almost give. Luna, Torrin and Mars are all standing. There's a body on the floor with one side of its skull caved in, but everyone else looks okay.
Mars opens his mouth, but I don't give him the chance to speak. My fist catches him square in the jaw as I pass. He drops with a grunt, and I step around him without slowing down because the only person I care about reaching is Luna.
Her face crumples the second she sees me.
"Ga-ge."
Her voice breaks on my name, and then she's moving.
I catch her and lift her straight off her feet as her arms lock around my neck.
My face goes into her cinnamon-red hair, and for a few seconds I do nothing except hold her and breathe.
She's warm, she's alive, and she's in my arms. That's all I need right now.
When I finally make myself pull back, I check her properly. Her skin is pale, and there are dark circles under her eyes from too little sleep, but I don't see blood or anything that tells me she's hurt. She's here and she’s whole.
I press my forehead to hers. "Are you okay?"
She says my name again, and that broken sound nearly takes my legs out from under me.
"God, sweetheart. I'm so sorry it took me so long to get back to you."
"It doesn't matter." Her hands tung on my hair. "You're here now."
Torrin's hand closes around my shoulder and squeezes once. That's enough from him to know exactly what he's saying.
I reluctantly set Luna back on her feet, keeping my palm against her arm until I can slide my fingers through hers. I'm not ready to let go of her yet. I might not be for a while.
"We need to get out of here," I tell them. "Those soldiers are going to come looking for their friend any minute. They had to hear my rifle shot."
Mars gets back to his feet, rubbing his jaw. "That was you? You shot through the window? Jesus, Gage! You could've hit one of us!"
I ignore him, mostly because he's right and I'm not in the mood to discuss that. I keep Luna's hand in mine and lead her toward the stairs. Torrin follows, then Mars.
On the main floor, Penny finally abandons her food bowl when she sees Luna. She charges across the room whining, tail going so hard her entire back-end swings with it. Luna drops to her knees. "There's my girl! Oh my God, Penny. You're such a good girl. Such a brave girl."
Penny attacks her face with kisses while Luna laughs and tries to hold her still.
I stand there and watch them longer than I should because for the last week, every decision I've made has been about getting here.
Finding Luna. Finding the guys. Making sure the people I love are still alive.
Hearing her talk to Penny in that soft voice makes everything I went through to get back here worth it.
I force myself to look away and see that Torrin is checking the dead soldier's rifle, working the weapon over with steady hands.
"Good thinking," I tell him. "We'll need every weapon we can get our hands on if we're going to rescue the others."
His head snaps up. "The others? What do you mean?"
Luna looks over from where she's still kneeling beside Penny. I don't want to put more fear on her face, but she needs to know.
"There was a roadblock on the highway coming into town. Soldiers were pulling people out of their cars and forcing them onto buses at gunpoint."
Torrin's expression hardens.
"I got off the road before they saw me, then followed one of the buses across town. They took everyone to a warehouse surrounded by chain link fences with barbed wire. There’s guards at the gate and soldiers all over the place."
Luna slowly stands.
"I saw Reid in the fenced yard out back," I continue. "If Reid's there, Jules probably is too. Those two don't get more than fifty feet apart."
Her hand finds mine again.
"You saw Reid? He's here?"
"Yeah, sweetheart. I saw him."
Her eyes immediately fill, but she blinks it back.
"Gigi might be there too. She went out yesterday to get more gas and never came home."
"Fuck."
The word is out before I can stop it, but there isn't much point pretending this situation deserves anything softer. I nod and start working through what we know.
"Okay. We get clear of the house first. Then we figure out how to get them out."
My mind goes back to the warehouse, the fence, the guards, and the weapons and how impossible that might be to fight against.
"I won't bullshit you. With two guns against that many soldiers, we're going to have a hell of a time getting inside without someone getting shot."
Torrin starts shaking his head. "I don't think we need guns."
I look at him as he glances toward Luna, then down toward his own hands.