Chapter 2
BEACON
The grass was cold and damp against my trousers. That was the thing my brain chose to hold on to while the building came apart behind me.
Lyra dropped beside me and pulled me into her arms. I grabbed her back with my one good hand and held on tight to the woman who was more than my boss; she was my family. Her father and my grandmother were siblings, and I’d lived with her and her husband since my parents died when I was a child.
“Katarina.”
“Lyra. Oh God.”
My voice cracked, and I pressed my face into her shoulder. She was shaking. I was too.
A medic had cut my sleeve to splint my left arm and taped gauze over the gash on my head.
He braced my knee with what he had and told me to stay off it.
I wanted to tell him to forget about me and go help the people inside the building, but there was no one left to help.
Everyone they’d carried out so far was under a sheet.
Magnolia was sitting on the grass twenty yards from me. A medic was pressing gauze to her ear. She’d walked out on her own before Blackjack carried me through.
Stretchers came from the main entrance, or what was left of it. I counted them. The first shape was too broad to be anyone but a man I’d known since I was a girl. The second was someone small. The third came out while the medic was taping my knee, and I made him move so I could see.
Lyra’s tears ran lines down the dust on her face, and she didn’t wipe them. Henry sat silently beside her with as much of his body pressed against hers as he could manage.
I didn’t cry. I hadn’t in years, and tonight was no exception.
People came and went from the building. The structure groaned and shed stone that sent them scrambling clear. One more stretcher came out, carrying someone alive. It was Givre, and Dagger was beside her. Every stretcher after that carried a body.
Henry left ahead of us to ready the estate. Lyra didn’t argue with him, which meant she’d asked him to go.
I tracked every person who emerged from the building after that, and none of them was Blackjack. The others had come out in pairs or with stretcher crews. He was still inside. He’d gone back in after he carried me out, and he hadn’t come out again.
Rescue crews rotated out. Stretcher teams passed me. I could account for every person on that hillside except him, and the longer the building groaned, the harder it got to sit there and do nothing about it.
Then a figure came out alone, and I knew who it was before I could see his face.
Blackjack’s shirt was torn across the shoulder where he’d lifted something too heavy. He stood at the edge of the rubble, with his shaking hands at his sides while the rest of him was locked solid, and that tremor was the only thing that told me he was human and not a machine running on orders.
He crossed to Lyra first, and she gripped his forearms when she stood to meet him. He put his palm over her hand for half a second before letting go and walking over to one of the SUVs. He opened the rear door, then returned to where I sat on the grass.
“Time to go,” he said, crouching in front of me. “We need to get Mercury home. I’ll carry you to the vehicle.”
“But I can’t leave them.”
“Everyone is out, Beacon. All of them.”
I nodded once, and he lifted me. I turned my face toward what was left of the Minerva Protocol’s headquarters. My guess was that, by tomorrow, the remaining walls would have crumbled. I’d have to return. There was something in that building that couldn’t be lost.
This was the closest I’d been to the man carrying me, not that it was the first time I noticed him.
Bishop Black had dark curly hair, hazel eyes, a jaw that belonged on a recruiting poster, and the kind of build that came from years of hard use, not a gym membership. He was covered in dust and blood, and he was still one of the most attractive men I’d ever seen.
He rested me on the bench seat with a gentleness that belied his powerful build.
My arm throbbed with every turn the SUV took once we were on the road.
The headquarters had been tucked into the hills above Lausanne on the northern shore of Lac Léman—Lake Geneva to the rest of the world.
The estate where my grandmother Polina and my aunt, Anna, lived was twenty minutes east along the shore. I’d grown up making the drive between the two, through the vineyards and small villages that lined the route. Tonight, the road that had always meant going home meant leaving the dead behind.
Lights were on in every window of the estate when Blackjack slowed to pull in, and I remembered Henry had gotten there first, no doubt to be the one to break the news to my grandmother and Anna.
I’d taken his steadfast bravery in the face of everything our family had endured over the years for granted. Now, I was thankful he and Lyra hadn’t been in there when the bombs detonated.
When we arrived at the estate, Blackjack parked near the front entrance, then came around to my side. He opened the door and reached in to gather me in his arms like I was a kid who hadn’t learned to walk yet. I’d argue and tell him I was fine on my own, except I wasn’t sure I would be.
Henry met us on the front steps with a cane. “I thought this might help for the time being.”
Blackjack set me on my feet, and Henry let me lean on him for as long as it took me to get to a chair. He and Blackjack spoke in quiet tones that I didn’t bother trying to overhear.
The only light in the foyer was from an antique lamp that was never off.
When I got to my feet, Henry rushed over and guided me down the hall.
Voices came from deeper in the house. I recognized most of them.
They were making calls to the victims’ families, handling the logistics for the remains, and running the response that needed to happen tonight.
I should help, but I couldn’t bring myself to.
Anna was at the foot of the stairs, her eyes swollen from crying.
“Oh, my girl.”
When she put her arms around me, I rested my face against her shoulder. “I’m here,” I said.
“Thank God,” she said, stroking my hair.
“It’s gone, Anna. The whole building is gone.” Hearing myself say it was different from knowing it. “Forge and Verdant and Cipher and—”
“I know.” She leaned away and rested her hands on my cheeks. “That you are here is all that matters now.”
“There are others who didn’t—”
“We will grieve them, Katarina. Every one of them. But right now, your grandmother needs to see you.”
Henry took my arm and walked me to where she sat by the window.
“Babushka.” I wished I could run over and hug her. Instead, Henry had to guide me across the parlor to her.
I didn’t know how my grandmother kept going. She had buried her only son and his wife, then lost her husband and her brother within two years of each other. Now, she waited in a chair by a window to find out if her granddaughter was next.
She stood and took my face in both hands, like Anna had. Her fingers were cold. “You were inside.”
“Yes.”
“You made it out.”
“A man lifted a beam off me and saved me.”
She kissed my forehead. “Sit with me.”
“Forgive me, but Lyra—”
Her thumbs moved across my cheekbones once. “Of course. You go to her now. We will have time together tomorrow.”
The cane was against the wall, where Blackjack had left it. I got myself to my feet and went to find Lyra.
The study door was open a crack, and through it, I could hear her and Henry, but not what they were saying. I knocked, and Henry shouted for me to come in. She was sitting near the window, her arms wrapped around herself, and her husband was beside her.
I sat, and the pressure came off my knee, and for a second, all I could do was breathe.
She took my good hand, and I held on tight.
“There’s something I need to tell you,” she said.
I nodded once.
“They were after me specifically.”
“You can’t know that for certain. Yes, it makes sense, but it was all of Minerva, Lyra. They wanted to destroy everyone and everything.”
She didn’t argue. “I can’t imagine how terrifying it must have been.”
“I could hear them under the rubble. I could hear people, but I couldn’t get to them—” I hung my head, unsure if I could continue.
But I had to. Lyra deserved to know what had happened inside that building.
“Blackjack got me out. I didn’t want to go.
He made me, and he was right, but I didn’t want to leave them. ”
Lyra brushed a tear from her cheek with the back of her hand.
“The dust was so thick I couldn’t see my own hands.
I found bodies by stepping on them. I checked pulses on people I’ve known my whole life, and there was nothing.
And the building kept making sounds, Lyra.
It kept groaning like it was alive, and every time a piece of stone fell, I thought, ‘This is it. This is the one that kills me, and at least I’ll be with them. ’”
Lyra sank to her knees in front of me and wrapped her arms around me. Henry was somewhere behind me. I’d forgotten he was in the room until his hand squeezed my shoulder.
“When does it end? My grandfather and my parents. Your father and sisters. And now, this. They won’t stop until they’ve wiped us from the face of the earth, will they?” My words sounded like a cry, but still, I had no tears. “What is wrong with me?”
Lyra squeezed me harder. “Nothing is wrong with you.”
“But I can’t cry for them.”
“Katarina. Look at me.” She waited until my eyes met hers. “You stayed in a collapsing building to find survivors. You checked pulses on the dead with a broken arm. You refused to leave until your body failed you. Don’t you dare sit in front of me and ask what’s wrong with you.”
The three of us were silent for what felt like several minutes. Then Lyra eased herself into her chair. Henry pulled another up and sat beside her.
“I keep waiting for my brain to do what it always does,” she began. “Find the problem, build the response, move forward. It’s not working.”
“It’s gone,” I said.
“You’re right.” She covered her face.
“Minerva failed. Whatever replaces it, doesn’t.”
Lyra raised her head, and her eyes bored into mine. “What did you say?”
“I was wrong when I said they won’t stop until they wipe us from the face of the earth. It’s our turn now, and we end them.”
A shadow passed the doorway.
“Blackjack? Is that you?” Lyra called out.
He stuck his head in the door. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“You aren’t.” She held out her hand. “Come join us.”
He crossed the room, took the only empty chair, and pulled it closer.
Lyra reached for his hand. “Thank you,” she said. “For everything you did today.”
He didn’t say it was nothing, because it wasn’t.
“It’s enough for tonight,” said Henry.
Lyra turned to him and nodded. Then she squeezed Blackjack’s hand one more time. “Will you help Katarina upstairs?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Of course.”
Henry helped me up, and Blackjack took my arm. I leaned on him and the cane as we left the study. I froze when we got to the stairs, and I remembered counting all twenty-eight steps more than once in my lifetime.
“I know how much you hate this,” he said. “But for tonight, just let me.”
“Okay,” I muttered.
Blackjack lifted me in his arms, and rather than fight it, I rested my head on his shoulder.
He carried me up the steps and into my room, where he set me on the bed.
“Do you need help with anything?”
“No. But thank you.”
He walked to the door, but before leaving, he looked over his shoulder. “Good night, Katarina. I’m glad you’re still here.”
“I’m glad you’re still here too, Bishop.”
I managed to get my shoes off, but I didn’t have the energy to remove the clothes I’d almost died in.
I lay my head on the pillow and pulled the blanket over me.
The room was quiet. The house was not. I could hear voices below me, phones, footsteps, the sounds of people taking care of things I wasn’t able to.
And I accepted that. I’d been inside. They hadn’t.
Tomorrow would be different. I’d be with them.
I reached for the cane that Blackjack had rested against the nightstand and put it next to me on the bed. My arm was broken, my knee was wrecked, but I’d told Lyra we were going to end the people who did this.
And I meant it.